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Posts Tagged ‘Salvation’

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Sacred Heart

In 05 Homilies by Fr. Reid on 2013/06/07 at 12:00 AM

One of the most beautiful devotional representations of our Lord is His Sacred Heart. We’re  blessed here at St. Ann’s to have a beautiful statue of the Sacred Heart as well as a stained glass window with this image.

In our window Jesus is revealing His Sacred Heart to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. What I love most about images of the Sacred Heart is that they show our Lord’s heart with flames, a sign of His burning love for us.

St. Mary Margaret received several apparitions of our Lord, through which she was given a greater understanding of the infinite and burning love our Lord has for mankind. In one
apparition she even saw our Lord’s heart on fire with love for mankind.

Jesus asked St. Mary Margaret to make up for the coldness and ingratitude of mankind by receiving Holy Communion in reparation for sin, especially on the first Friday of every month  for nine consecutive months.

It was from these apparitions that we now have the First Friday devotion that is so popular and important in our Church.

For those who do receive Holy Communion in reparation for sins on 9 consecutive first Fridays, our Lord promises that they will receive the grace of final repentance, and that they will not die without receiving the Sacraments.

Even though God’s love for us should be perfectly clear from reading Scripture and from any study of salvation history, perhaps this is a truth that we too easily lose sight of.

But our Lord’s heart does indeed burn for us, so much does He love us. I sometimes wonder if we truly understood the depth of God’s love for us, if we would die of love – especially as we consider how sinful and undeserving we are of His love.

Sadly, human history shows that humanity is often unresponsive and even callous to God’s love, which was His complaint to St. Mary Margaret. Even though His love is completely sacrificial and open to all people regardless of race, nationality, or creed, so many turn away from Him.

It is particularly sad because God’s great desire is that all of us share eternally in His love in the glory of Heaven. It is for this reason that our Lord became one of us and died for us.

Indeed, the Father has created us for living with the Trinity eternally in a union of love.

While God’s love is for all people, our Lord had a chosen people: the Israelites, who were given a special role in salvation history. It was to this people that Jesus came and first revealed Himself as Lord.

This is why in the Gospel today our Lord tells the Canaanite woman, a Gentile foreigner, that He was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. It was later with St. Paul that the Gospel was spread to the Gentiles, something we hear about today in the second reading.

But since the time of Jesus’ death and resurrection, our Lord has a new people whom He calls

His very own: it is the people who love Him in return and who seek to be united to Him.

Our first reading from the Prophet Isaiah speaks about foreigners and their relationship to God. Of course God desires that none of us be foreigners, but that we all be His people as He has created us to be.

But even though all men are created in God’s image and likeness, we must recognize that we are born separated from God in the darkness of original sin. We are all spiritual gentiles and foreigners at birth because of original sin.

But baptism changes all that, for it is only through baptism that we are fully reconciled to God and made His children, His chosen people. • Once we become His children through baptism, we are strangers and sojourners no longer. As St. Paul writes to the people of Ephesus, we become “fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God.” (Eph 2:19)

And so all of us have the capacity to be God’s chosen people, to be members of His family through baptism. For being God’s chosen people is not a matter of belonging to a certain race or class of people. Being God’s chosen people is simply a matter of choosing Him.
Indeed, the only people who are truly foreign to God are those who alienate themselves from Him through sin. It is sin and sin alone that separates us from God.

And so we must be vigilant to root out sin from our lives, even those small venial sins that we think no one sees, for choosing to sin is always a choosing against God rather than for Him.

All sin makes us – at least to some degree – a foreigner in God’s eyes. And, of course, if our sin is mortal, it not only damages our relationship with God, but it completely severs it and puts us in danger of going to hell.

It is for this reason that Isaiah tells us to “observe what is right, do what is just.” To be God’s chosen people, to be His children, we must do our best to constantly choose Him and His will above all else. We must seek to keep His commandments by doing what is right and just.

Alas, our broken human nature is fickle, is it not? Despite our genuine love for God, all of us from time to time turn away from Him through sin. None of us – save our Lady – has lived or ever will live a perfectly sinless life.
Of course our Lord knows this, which is why He gives us the Sacrament of Reconciliation by which we can be made whole from the destruction wrought in our souls through our sinfulness. His burning and infinite love cannot help but forgive the sins of His repentant children.
But in addition to cultivating repentance and making use of the confessional as needed, the Gospel teaches us today that there is something else we must do if we wish to be a member of God’s chosen people rather than a foreigner: we must have faith.

In our Gospel today we have the rather strange story of Jesus calling a Canaanite woman a dog. It’s easy to wonder why our Lord would ever refer to anyone in such an insulting manner.

But Jesus did this in order to elicit faith from this woman. He wants to know if she really does believe in Him, if she really believes He is the Lord. And she passes the test. Not even an insult from Jesus can deter her from Him. And it is at that moment that Jesus commends her for her great faith and heals her daughter.
In healing the daughter of a Gentile, Jesus proves that He was ultimately here on earth to bring salvation to all people, not just the Jews.
But this Gospel also shows us the power of an undeterred faith! Having faith in our Lord, a faith that believes confidently in our Lord’s omnipotence, mercy, and compassion, is proof positive of our love for God – and is therefore one of the best ways we can respond to His love.

Ultimately, believing in God’s love for us is an act of faith (cf. 1 Jn 4), and loving God by having faith in Him is how we are most closely united to Him.

St. John of the Cross teaches us that: “even in this life faith gives us God, covered, it is true, with a veil but nonetheless God Himself” (Collected Works St. 12:4).

My brothers and sisters, our Lord’s most Sacred Heart is burning with love for all of us. It’s a burning that cannot be quenched even by our ingratitude and callousness.

Let us repay His love by practicing the virtue of faith, trusting confidently that He can and will do everything necessary to help us on our path to salvation.

Let us return His love, as well, by gratefully patterning our lives after Him: loving all people generously and without reserve, and by living our Catholic faith without compromise.

Copyright 2011 by Reverend Timothy S. Reid

Reverend Reid is pastor of St. Ann’s Catholic  Church in Charlotte, NC

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What the Resurrection of Christ Means for Our Lives

In Uncategorized on 2013/04/16 at 6:30 PM

Dear Brothers and Sisters, good day!

 Today I would like to reflect on its meaning for salvation. What does the Resurrection mean for our lives? And why, without it, is our faith in vain? Our faith is based on the death and resurrection of Christ, just like a house built on foundations: if they give in, the whole house collapses.

On the Cross, Jesus offered himself taking sins upon himself our and going down into the abyss of death, and in the Resurrection he defeats them, he removes them and opens up to us the path to be reborn to a new life. St. Peter expresses it briefly at the beginning of his First Letter, as we have heard: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy gave us a new birth to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you”(1:3-4).

The Apostle tells us that the Resurrection of Jesus is something new: we are freed from the slavery of sin and become children of God, that we are born to a new life. When does this happen to us? In the Sacrament of Baptism. In ancient times, it was normally received through immersion. Those to be baptized immersed themselves in the large pool within the Baptistery, leaving their clothes, and the bishop or the priest would pour water over their head three times, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Then the baptized would emerge from the pool and put on a new vestment, a white one: they were born to a new life, immersing themselves in the death and resurrection of Christ. They had become children of God. I

In the Letter to the Romans Saint Paul writes: you ” For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption, through which we cry, “Abba, Father! ‘”(Rom. 8:15). It is the Holy Spirit that we received in baptism that teaches us, leads us to say to God, “Father.” Or rather, Abba Father. This is our God, He is a father to us.

The Holy Spirit produces in us this new status as children of God, and this is the greatest gift we receive from the Paschal Mystery of Jesus. And God treats us as His children, He understands us, forgives us, embraces us, loves us even when we make mistakes . In the Old Testament, the prophet Isaiah said that even though a mother may forget her child, God never, ever forgets us (cf. 49:15). And this is a beautiful thing, beautiful!

However, this filial relationship with God is not like a treasure to be kept in a corner of our lives. It must grow, it must be nourished every day by hearing the Word of God, prayer, participation in the sacraments, especially the Sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist and charity. We can live as children! We can live as children! And this is our dignity. So let us behave as true children! This means that each day we must let Christ transform us and make us like Him; it means trying to live as Christians, trying to follow him, even if we see our limitations and our weaknesses.

The temptation to put God to one side, to put ourselves at the center is ever-present and the experience of sin wounds our Christian life, our being children of God. This is why we must have the courage of faith, we must resist being led to the mentality that tells us: “There is no need for God, He is not that important for you”. It is the exact opposite: only by behaving as children of God, without being discouraged by our falls, can we feel loved by Him, our life will be new, inspired by serenity and joy. God is our strength! God is our hope!

Dear brothers and sisters, we must first must firmly have this hope and we must be visible, clear, brilliant signs of hope in world. The Risen Lord is the hope that never fails, that does not disappoint (cf. Rom 5:5). God’s hope never disappoints!. How many times in our life do our hopes vanish, how many times do the expectations that we carry in our heart not come true! The hope of Christians is strong, safe and sound in this land, where God has called us to walk, and is open to eternity, because it is founded on God, who is always faithful.

We should never forget this; God is always faithful! God is always faithful! Be risen with Christ through Baptism, with the gift of faith, to an imperishable inheritance, leads us to increasingly search for the things of God, to think of Him more, to pray more. Christianity is not simply a matter of following commandments; it is about living a new life, being in Christ, thinking and acting like Christ, and being transformed by the love of Christ, it is allowing Him take possession of our lives and change them, transform them, to free them from the darkness of evil and sin.

Dear brothers and sisters, to those who ask us our reasons for the hope that is in us (cf. 1 Pt 3:15), let us point to the Risen Christ. Let us point to Him with the proclamation of the Word, but especially with our resurrected life. Let us show the joy of being children of God, the freedom he gives us to live in Christ, who is true freedom, freedom from the slavery of evil, sin and death! In looking to our heavenly home, we will also have a new light and strength in our commitment and in our daily efforts. It is a precious service that we give to our world, which is often no longer able to lift its gaze upwards, it no longer seems able to lift its gaze towards God.

VIS

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The Unpreached Sermon: “a layman thinking like a priest”. Part II

In 08 Musings by Jack Reagan on 2013/01/05 at 9:11 AM

Let me tell you what he and she has done to themselves:

1. You live in a world of make-belief.  God has commanded us to worship Him (third commandment), but you have decided that, for you, the command is optional.  We are are nothing compared to God and we simply do not have a choice or right to reject a divine command.  The Church has made it relatively easy to obey this directive by mandating Sunday Mass (two hours at most out of one hundred and sixty eight) yet, in your crass stupidity you have decided that you will worship Supreme Being according to your own whim.  That is unrealistic!

2. This makes you the unwisest of people.  The divinely-set goal for humans is to be united with God for all eternity.  You, by amassing mortal sin after mortal sin, have shown a total lack of wisdom.  (A wise person knows what is important and valuable and acts on it appropriately.)  At this rate, no matter what worldly success you achieve, you will be a total failure in spiritual matters and that is what really counts against you.  A truly wise person knows this.

3.  Your salvation (goal) is at risk every second of your life.  You don’t know when you will die, and if you die loaded with serious sin, you will have objectively chosen hell for yourself.  Death is not the exclusive activity of the elderly; many, many younger people die through sickness, accident, life-style and crime.  If you are young it is true that you will likely be alive a year from now, BUT, it is not guaranteed, and that’s the problem.  It is rather dumb to risk hell for whatever activity you have decided is more important than Sunday Mass.  “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and suffers the loss of his soul.”  Sometimes people will take risks for noble reasons such as to save lives, but to risk your soul for mere two hours a week is neither realistic nor wise.

4.  You have cut yourself off from God.  (If you have unconfessed mortal sin today, do not come up for Holy Communion because that would be a sacrilege which is a worse sin than skipping Mass.)  The only grace you can legitimately pray for is the grace of repentance through Confession.  While you live, Christ can forgive a million mortal sins, if repentant.  After death, there is no mercy available, only judgment.  The game is over and you have either won or lost.

5. Your spiritual life has probably been further ruined because failure to attend Mass regularly is often the result of other habitual sins that make Mass attendance seem useless.  Bishop Fulton Sheen used to say that no one left the Church because he sat down and examined its doctrine and found them to be false.  It can’t be done.  The underlying reason, he said, was habits of serious sin such as marital infidelity, alcoholism, drugs, pornography, etc…

If you are in this very negative situation, my words are spoken in persona Christ.  He may be offering you that grace of repentance because He knows you do not have long to live.  Or you may actually feel a terrible burden combined with fear of the future.  If Christ is speaking and calling you today, don’t be dumb and ignore it because the Bible tells us that He will loose patience with stubborn sinner who consistently ignore His grace and they become spiritually hard-hearted.

Christmas is a great day for family and feast but I will be here after Mass today to hear Confessions and forgive you in the name of Christ for as long as anyone wishes to come.   This would be your greatest Christmas gift.

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The Unpreached Sermon: “a layman thinking like a priest”. Part I

In 08 Musings by Jack Reagan on 2013/01/05 at 12:00 AM

My dear friends in Christ,

Christmas is spiritual joy because it is the beginning of our redemption. God the Son has taken on a human form so as to represent humanity in the process of atonement. Yet, because He remains God, His future sacrifice on Good Friday will be acceptable to God the Father.  Without Christmas and Good Friday, no one, regardless of how well he has lived on earth, could ever get into heaven.  Without Christ original sin would condemn us all to hell.  Something to be grateful for to say the least.

The next part of this sermon some of you might not like.  Let me preface it by stating that when a man is ordained a priest (assuming the correct understanding, motives and intentions) he become an alter Christus (another Christ).  In his spiritual ministry he acts in persona Christi (in the person of Christ).  Thus in every Mass and Sacrament, it is Christ Himself in operation through His duly ordained priest.  Now I am speaking in persona Christi because I am responsible for the spiritual welfare of all of you.

Christmas is also a time of sadness. When I look out and see the extra crowd of people  at the Mass, I know that many of you are either Christmas-Easter “Catholics” or you are intermittent and casual Mass attenders.

(In all my years of attending Christmas and Easter Masses, I have never heard the slightest reference to the lapsed Catholics sitting right in front of the priest.  I wonder if Christ Himself would have ignored the loss sheep.)

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“God humbled himself”

In 01 Daily Meditations on 2012/12/28 at 9:11 AM
In Bethlehem is born our God: Jesus Christ! —There is no room at the inn: He is born in a stable. —And His Mother wraps Him in swaddling clothes and lays Him in a manger. Cold. —Poverty… —I am Joseph’s little servant. —How good Joseph is! —He treats me like a father. —He even forgives me if I take the Child in my arms and spend hour after hour saying sweet and loving things to Him!… And I kiss Him —you kiss Him too! —and I rock Him in my arms, and I sing to Him, and I call Him King, Love, my God, my Only-one, my All!… How beautiful is the Child and how short the decade! (Holy Rosary, Third Joyful Mystery)

He began by spending nine months in his Mother’s womb, like the rest of men, following the natural course of events. He knew that mankind needed him greatly. He was longing to come into the world to save all souls, but he took his time. He came in due course, just as every other child is born. From conception to birth, no one — except our Lady, St Joseph and St Elizabeth — realized the marvellous truth that God was coming to live among men.

There is a great simplicity also about his birth. Our Lord comes without any fanfare. No one knows about him. On earth only Mary and Joseph share in the divine adventure. And then the shepherds who received the message from the angels. And later on, the wise men from the East. They were the only witnesses of this transcendental event which unites heaven and earth, God and man.

How can our hearts be so hard that we can get used to these scenes? God humbled himself to allow us to get near him, so that we could give our love in exchange for his, so that our freedom might bow, not only at the sight of his power, but also before the wonder of his humility.

The greatness of this Child who is God! His Father is the God who has made heaven and earth and there he is, in a manger, “because there was no room at the inn”[1] — there was nowhere else for the Lord of all creation. (Christ is passing by, 18)
[1] Luke 2:7

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“God who created you without you, will not save you without you”

In 01 Daily Meditations on 2012/03/21 at 9:11 AM
 I am copying this example of cowardice from a letter so that you will not imitate it: “I am certainly very grateful to you for keeping me in mind, because I need many prayers. But I would also be grateful if, when you ask Our Lord to make me an apostle, you would not insist on asking him to make me surrender my freedom.” (Furrow, 11)

I readily understand those words of St Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, which ring out like a wonderful hymn to freedom, ‘God who created you without you, will not save you without you’ [1]. Every single one of us, you and I as well, always has the possibility, the unfortunate possibility of rising up against God, of rejecting him (perhaps by our behaviour) or of crying out, ‘we do not want this man to rule over us’[2]…

Ask yourself now (I too am examining my conscience) whether you are holding firmly and unshakably to your choice of Life? When you hear the most lovable voice of God urging you on to holiness, do you freely answer ‘Yes’? Let us turn our gaze once more to Jesus, as he speaks to the people in the towns and countryside of Palestine. He doesn’t want to force himself upon us. ‘If you have a mind to be perfect…’ [3], he says to the rich young man. The young man refused to take the hint, and the Gospel goes on to say: abiit tristis [4], he went away forlorn. That is why I have sometimes called him the ‘sad lad’. He lost his happiness because he refused to hand over his freedom to God. (Friends of God, 23-34)

[1] St Augustine, Sermo 169, 13 (PL 38,923)
[2] Luke 19:14
[3] Matt 19:21
[4] Matt 19:22

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Atheism by Fr. Reid

In 05 Homilies by Fr. Reid on 2012/01/27 at 9:11 AM

• Over the past couple of decades, western society has witnessed a growing atheism. Little by little, the ranks of people who profess that God does not or cannot exist are increasing.

• Led by scientists like Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawking, entrepreneurs like Warren Buffett, and even entertainers like Mick Jagger and the late George Carlin, atheists and agnostics are more and more finding a public voice.

• But from a Catholic perspective, atheism is both an intellectual and a moral failure.

• Atheism is an intellectual failure because it fails to recognize that the splendor, majesty, beauty, and rationality of creation could only come from the most splendid, majestic, beautiful, and rational of minds, from an ultimate first cause.

• But even worse is its moral failure. Atheism is a moral failure because it is, at its heart, a refusal of the natural law that is written upon the hearts of all men. It’s a refusal to humble oneself before the Almightly, whose fingerprints are all over the created world, while proudly insisting upon the preeminence of man.

• Of course atheism stands in stark contrast to the season of Christmas, which we just concluded last week, and which not only heralded the birth of our God made man, but also revealed His manifestation as the Light of the World to all nations.

• Like a lover who finds it difficult to depart from his beloved after a long day together, our readings today cling to themes we enjoyed in the Epiphany and Baptism of our Lord.

• Our first reading from Isaiah speaks of the “light to the nations” so that “salvation may reach to the ends of the earth,” which recalls the prominent themes of the Epiphany.

• And in our Gospel story today we have St. John the Baptist’s testimony to the Spirit descending like a dove upon Jesus, a clear reference to our Lord’s baptism.

• So why are we lingering with Christmas themes now that we are in Ordinary Time? Simply put, because Christmas is important! The Christmas Season is important to our Catholic faith because it is in the liturgies of the Christmas Season that we learn Who Jesus truly Is.

• You see, Christmas for Catholics is not simply the anniversary of our Lord’s birth. Christmas is the celebration that our Lord Jesus, veiled in human flesh, comes to us to dwell with us, to be one of us, so that He can save us from our sins.

• The Christmas Season celebrates our Lord’s birth, His manifestation to the world, and the revelation that Jesus truly is the Son of God. As such, the Christmas Season celebrates and extols our Lord Jesus Christ as Love and Mercy incarnate.

• And this is reiterated for us in the Gospel today in St. John’s testimony that Jesus is both the Son of the God and the “Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”

• As the Son of God, Jesus has come to earth to be the Lamb of God, the One who will sacrifice Himself on Calvary for the forgiveness of our sins.

• So while today’s readings hearken back to Christmas, our Gospel also points us toward Holy Week, when we will see this Lamb slain.

• As such, today’s readings serve as a sort of exclamation point on the liturgies of the Christmas Season. Yet our liturgy today serves as an invitation, as well, to meditate more deeply who Jesus Is, and what the revelation of His identity means to our lives.

• You see, my dear brothers and sisters, while our Catholic faith is both inherently rational and historically factual, and therefore supremely worthy of belief by all people, we must never allow ourselves to become comfortable in this knowledge.

• This is one of the ways that we differ from the atheists and agnostics. While so many atheists are smug in their proud rationalizations and the houses they build upon the sand of intellectual pride, their lack of belief does not demand anything of them.

• As an atheist you are free to adopt any type of moral behavior that you wish. Anything goes for the atheist because nothing matters. Nothing has eternal consequences. But even more importantly, nothing calls them to love outside of natural inclinations given to all humans.

• But our faith does make demands upon us. Through the Christmas Season we received the manifestation of the Word-Made-Flesh. He has revealed Himself to us as the Light to the Nations, the Savior of All, and Love Incarnate.

• And so it is not enough for us to intellectually consent to these truths. Our faith demands that we conform our lives to these truths, living in a manner that witnesses to our belief in Jesus as the Son of God and the Lamb of God.

• Indeed, according to St. Paul today, our faith demands that we be holy. Not simply nice, not simply good, but HOLY – because we have been sanctified in Christ Jesus.

• And our responsorial psalm reminds us of the fundamental attitude we must adopt if we truly want to be holy: a firm readiness to do God’s will, no matter what.

• Of course doing God’s will can encompass many things in our lives, but from a general point of view we must keep in mind the highest commandment that Jesus Himself gave us: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matt 22:37).

• The first epistle of St. John reminds us that the love of God consists in obeying His commandments (1 John 5:3). And the 25th chapter of Matthew reminds us that we show our love for God by exercising the corporal works of mercy.

• Accordingly, exercising obedience and performing works of mercy must be integral to the way we live our lives if we love God. But there is something even more fundamental if we wish to truly love God and do His will so that we can be holy: we must pray.

• Last week I spoke a bit about how we go about receiving the sacraments, noting that being pious, reverent, and conscientious in our reception of the sacraments disposes us to receive the grace of the sacraments in such a way that it bears good fruit in our souls.

• But underlying our piety, our reverence, and our conscientiousness must be a deep, abiding, and personal love for God, and a true desire to serve Him. And this can only come if we have a true relationship with God – something that can only be formed in silent prayer.

• While prayer often has a vocal and expressive dimension to it, and while it can include our petitions to God, as well as our expressions of gratitude and love, the deepest prayer has no words at all, but is simply a matter of being with God in the silence of our hearts.

• For it is in our silent communion with God that He speaks to us and reveals Himself to us. It is in silent prayer that God gives Himself to us and we can fully give ourselves to Him, just as a bride entrusts herself to her bridegroom on their wedding night.

• It is silent prayer that we share now in the divine intimacy that will find its completion and apex only in the glories of heaven. So make time to pray in silence everyday. If you think you’re too busy to do so, you don’t have your priorities straight.

• Dear brothers and sisters in Christ: our Lord has revealed Himself to us as both the Son of God and the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. Let us respond to Him by learning to love Him as we should in the silence of prayer.

Copyright 2011 by Reverend Timothy S. Reid

Reverend Reid is pastor of St. Ann’s Catholic  Church in Charlotte, NC

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What Could Have Been by Jack Reagan

In 08 Musings by Jack Reagan on 2011/12/30 at 9:40 AM

Now that Christmas Day has come and gone for another year, and all the activities associated with Christmas, such as shopping, presents, food and carols have ended, and we have the time and the disposition to think about Christmas and its real significance, it might be well to reflect on the extraordinary gift that the first Christmas was, or, perhaps, better still, if there had not been a first Christmas, if the Second Person of the Trinity had not lowered Himself to become a human (while still keeping His divinity), how would that have affected the world and us? It may be a good time to contemplate what would have happened had there been no first Christmas.

When Adam and Eve were created by God, they constituted the whole human race. God made a pact with them which would benefit them and their descendants. Basically, the pact involved obedience to a small rule about eating the fruit of a certain tree. They broke their agreement and they and we lost out. We called this Original Sin. We are not guilty of this sin, but we were included in the pact, and therefore, the effects.

Since sin is an infinite offense against the infinite God, no human or any number of finite humans could possibly atone for the sin. Only God could do something to rectify the situation. At that point, we were all doomed to Hell, but God is so committed to mankind that He agreed to solve our problem by sending a Redeemer who would be able to make adequate atonement for sin. This Redeemer was Jesus Christ who, because He was divine, could offer an infinite atonement, and because He was also human, could represent mankind in the atonement. In the fullness of time, the Redeemer appeared as a baby on the first Christmas day.

But suppose God had told Adam that he was now on his own and good luck.

1. There would be no Redemption of the human race. We would be doomed to Hell regardless of our  manner of living. There would simply be no hope because there would be nothing to hope for. We would live and die in the state of Original Sin totally helpless and hopeless.

2. Humans would live in a permanent state of spiritual darkness. God began creation with light because future humans were not to be creatures of the dark. Darkness has always been seen to be a negative. All kinds of evils are associated with darkness. To live a condition of spiritual blindness would so enfeeble us that our lives would be a negative existence.

3. Religions, if there were any, would be a hodge-podge of many man-made doctrines by people who had no real concept  of religious truth. They would be subjective with no objective reality. There would be no Catholic Church, founded and guided by Christ to set the standard for truth in religion. There would be no Baptism to take away Original Sin, no Confession to clean the moral slate, no Holy Eucharist to remind us of the ongoing presence of God because Christ would not have come to institute these and the other Sacraments.

4.There would be no divine Revelation (the Bible) because God would be silent. Even if there were a Bible, it would have been useless to help us avoid the coming doom.  We would have been deprived of the divinely-inspired message of God who is all truth, and, therefore, without any guidance toward our end. We would be traveling in a strange world without a map.

5. A divinely-inspired moral code (the Ten Commandments) would be absent in human life. Moral codes would be written by the most various people, and be totally subjective, even to the point of saying, as some say now, that each one should make up his own  list of right and wrong. Therefore, evil of all kinds would abound. Life would be lived in fear of the immoral among us. Human survival demands an objective moral code; society cannot function without it. Yet, there would be none. In fact, it is likely that the human race would have died out  ages ago from the countless evils that humans can invent.

6. Death, rather than being seen as the gateway to eternal happiness with God (if we deserve it), becomes the gateway to Hell. There is no hope for anything better.

I’m sure others could give different and better reasons than I did, but my point is that the Incarnation was a gift to man beyond measure and comprehension. We will never fathom the goodness of God while we are on earth. His goodness is infinite (unlimited), and our minds are finite (limited). Without the busyness of the Christmas season to distract us, think about the awesome events of the first Christmas and how it affects YOU. Try not to see the first Christmas as some historical story, but as an event that directly impacts YOU.

Without Christmas, there would be no Good Friday, and with no Good Friday there will be no Resurrection and without all of these, you (and I) don’t stand a chance.

Christmas is not about a gift, but about THE GIFT.

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All Saints’ Day, November 1st

In 05 Homilies by Fr. Reid on 2011/10/28 at 10:59 PM

The saints remind us clearly of our call to purity and holiness of life. They remind us of the necessity of living in faith,hope, and love, and they show us the joy of embracing a life of virtue.

• But most importantly, the saints remind us that God has an image of who He wants us to be, and that we should strive with all our might to be that man or woman God has called us to be.

• Sacred Scripture tells us that our Lord has created us in His own image and likeness, but our Lord has also created each of us with a certain plan for our lives. In His mind our Lord has an image of the person He wants each of us to be.

• Throughout the course of our lives, if we choose to listen to our Lord through prayer, if we choose to follow God’s will, if we endeavor to grow in virtue and seek to make reparation for our sins, we are gradually transformed into that person our Lord has called us to be.

• In other words, growing into that person that God has called us to be is simply a matter of growing in holiness. It’s a matter of living out the Beatitudes that we heard in today’s Gospel.

• If we manage to live lives of holiness here on earth and become that person that God desires us to be and accept His mercy for the times we have fallen short, then we enter into the joys of Heaven and live united with our Lord for all eternity.

• Of course, if we are not sorry for our sins, if we have not asked for God’s mercy, if we have forfeited God’s friendship through mortal sin and have no desire to be united to Him, then we will merit the eternal pains of hell.

• But if we fail to realize God’s desire for our life but are still striving for holiness, and if we are sorry for our sins and have asked for our Lord’s mercy, then our Lord allows us to be perfected and made into the image He has of us in the afterlife. And this we call purgatory.

• Rather than being a place of punishment, purgatory, my friends, is actually a great sign of God’s mercy.

• You see, my friends, God and sin are mutually exclusive; they cannot exist together. So if we are to be eternally united with God in Heaven, then we must be free of all sin and all of our attachment to sin.

• If we fall short in our duty to grow in holiness in this life, or if we fail to make proper reparation for our sins, but still love God and desire to be with Him, then our Lord allows us to be purified in purgatory.

• This purification will involve suffering (commonly understood as purifying fire), and through this process God’s fiery love “burns” away all impurities on the person’s soul.

• And once the process of purification is completed, the soul enters into God’s presence and is fully united to Him. So purgatory is God’s way of preparing us fully to live with Him in Heaven forever.

• The saints are the people who have fulfilled that image God has of them during their lives on earth. They are people who have lived a life of holiness to a heroic degree and who have no need of purgatory.

• In other words, the saints are people who have proven not only that living a life of holiness is possible in this life, but that holiness is possible for any person living in any circumstance.

• In the Book of Revelation, we hear of St. John’s famous vision of heaven, and he tells us about the servants of God who come from every tribe of the children of Israel.

• St. John tells us of the great multitude of people standing before the throne of God, from every nation, race, people and tongue, and in doing so St. John tells us that sainthood is not restricted to a certain group or class of people. Sainthood is for all of us!

• And the Church’s history has borne this out. While the Church does make distinctions between various classes of saints, such as martyrs, pastors, virgins and religious, the Church’s roll of saints includes both men and women of all ages from every continent.

• And today’s feast calls us to be among their number when we die.

• The beautiful thing is that the saints not only call us to join them around God’s throne in the eternity of heaven, but through their merits and intercession they actually help us to fulfill God’s will and grow in holiness.

• The author of the Letter to the Hebrews speaks of the saints in Heaven as a “great cloud of witnesses,” and he writes: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us and persevere in running the race that lies before us while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfecter of faith” (Heb 12:1-2).

• As we celebrate this great Solemnity of All Saints, as we bask in the glory of this great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith, let us trust in their intercession to help us in whatever struggles life brings to us.

• Let us look to their example of heroic virtue and purity of life and seek to imitate it for the sake of our souls. Like the saints in Heaven, let us live out the Beatitudes with faithfulness and integrity so that we may one day join them around God’s throne.

Copyright 2009 by Reverend Timothy S. Reid

Reverend Reid is pastor of St. Ann’s Catholic  Church in Charlotte, NC