The St. Wenceslaus parish bulletin (PDF) for the 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time on July 10th, 2016.
July 10th Parish Bulletin
July 7, 2016“We God’s People” — July 4th Weekend — 14th Sunday of Ordinary Time—Year C
July 3, 2016Twelve score, or 240 years ago, our American forefathers began a revolution for freedom. For eight years, they fought to secure their independence from tyranny. They would go on to establish a national government; not meant create rights from nothing, but to help ensure and keep safe the human rights that “We the People” have from God. At the close of the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, a lady asked Dr. Benjamin Franklin, “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” He replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
The Framers established a government with three separate branches: a Legislative branch to create laws, an Executive branch to enforce the law, and a Judicial branch to resolve conflicts of law. This separation and balance of powers was designed to protect liberty against our fallen human nature. In the words of James Madison, who is called the architect of U.S. Constitution: “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” The Framers knew how leaders tend to consolidate power around themselves as dictators and the tendency of majorities to trample the rights of weaker minorities. James Madison adds, “It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”
Our American republic depends not merely upon its laws but on the virtue of its people. George Washington said, “Religion and morality are the essential pillars of civil society.” John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Ben Franklin said, “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”
Our representative government is made in our image, and unfortunately it reflects and shares our errors and flaws today. For example, we live beyond our means. The average American household owes $7,400 on credit cards. And our government in our likeness cannot repay its debts, which are approaching $20 trillion, or about $60,000 of debt for each one us. We end the lives of our unborn children, almost one million of them each year, and our three branches of government are either unwilling or unable to safeguard in law every innocent human being’s God-given right to life. We are increasingly non-religious, leading people to think that churches serve no spiritual or social good and that their tax-exemption should be stripped. And we see our religious freedom diminishing, such that you can be financially-ruined for exercising your religious conscience in your occupation. We think it’s OK to do whatever it takes to win, we see parents and coaches encouraging kids to cheat or siding with them when they get caught. Meanwhile our political leaders are so brazenly lawless and tell such transparent lies, yet there are no consequences for any of it. How can our country remain free if virtue and our respect for the rule of law dies?
It appears that trying years are ahead for Catholic Americans, but there are (at least) three things we can do: pray, prepare, and keep perspective.
We pray the St. Michael prayer near the end of our Masses to ask his help as the leader of the heavenly armies. We do this because evil spirits are real and active in our day. They are smarter than us and more powerful than us, but they are not more powerful than God and His angels. We should pray for our country. I cannot see how our country’s bad trends will be reversed, but God is cleverer and mightier than our imaginations so hope for a rebirth of virtue and freedom for our country remains.
In addition to prayer, we should prepare, beginning with ourselves. The final words before the signatures on the Declaration of Independence say, “[F]or the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” How much are we willing to sacrifice in obedience to Christ? This is important to consider, for Jesus says, “Everyone who acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father. But whoever denies me before others, I will deny before my heavenly Father.” We should also endeavor to prepare our children, be they youths or adults, for a future living as “lambs among wolves.” For if the things we see now are done when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?
Besides prayer and preparation, we should also keep perspective. This American experiment has been, on a whole, a blessing for its people and the world. However, there is no guarantee that the United States will endure until Jesus returns. Only the Catholic Church is assured to remain until the end, even if as a small, beleaguered remnant. One of the benefits of studying Church history is that you realize how the Church has always appeared to be going down the drain, with troubles and persecutions in every age, and yet she endures. Let us remember that this is not our eternal home. In not so many years, each one of us will shake the dust of this earth from our feet to leave for our true homeland. As Isaiah says in our first reading, “In Jerusalem [that is, the heavenly Jerusalem] you shall find your comfort.” We are citizens of Heaven, and as for this country, we are only passing through.
So let us pray, prepare, and keep perspective. Things look bad for our country in the years and decades ahead. Nevertheless, do not despair at the advances of evil around us, but rejoice because your names are written in heaven, and we know who wins in the end.
July 3rd Parish Bulletin
June 30, 2016The St. Wenceslaus parish bulletin (PDF) for the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time on July 3rd, 2016.
Hollywood’s Pope: Little Faith on the Small Screen
June 29, 2016This fall, HBO will begin airing an eight-episode miniseries imagining the first American to be elected pope. While this drama may or may not attract viewers, I predict “The Young Pope” will fail to truly capture the Catholic Faith and Church. I had similar doubts when Showtime floated a similar premise in 2013. (“The Vatican” was to star the actor who played Adolf Hitler in the movie “Downfall” but none of its episodes ever aired.) The creator and director of “The Young Pope,” Paolo Sorrentino, describes what his new series will be about:
Jude Law stars as “the complex and conflicted” Pope Pius XIII in “The Young Pope“
“The clear signs of God’s existence. The clear signs of God’s absence. How faith can be searched for and lost. The greatness of holiness, so great as to be unbearable when you are fighting temptations and when all you can do is to yield to them. The inner struggle between the huge responsibility of the Head of the Catholic Church and the miseries of the simple man that fate (or the Holy Spirit) chose as Pontiff. Finally, how to handle and manipulate power in a state whose dogma and moral imperative is the renunciation of power and selfless love towards one’s neighbor.”
Though some are more optimistic, I have low hopes for this series. The Catholic Church has beautiful stories to tell, but “The Young Pope’s” trailer and the quote above telegraph brooding agnosticism free of Christian joy. “The Young Pope’s” Pius XIII is reportedly “a conflicted man who must find a way to balance his ultra-conservative views with his immense compassion for the sick and the poor.” In other words, Catholic teachings will be falsely pitted against Christian love. Which one do you imagine will prevail in our hero?
A Vatican TV drama could be made with either the cynicism of “House of Cards” or the hopeful idealism of “The West Wing.” Which set of plot-lines below (“A” or “B”) do you think we could expect to see these days in a major miniseries about the papacy?
The Dinner Guest
A: The pope invites to dinner a priest-friend from seminary. At table, the priest asks the pope to lift the “impossible burden” of celibacy. The pope sympathizes but he explains (citing solely pragmatic reasons) that there is nothing he can do. By the meal’s end, the priest is asking to be released from the priesthood so that he might marry a former nun with whom he has fallen in love (and sin.) The pope, sadly subdued, grants his second request.
B: The pope invites to dinner a Roman beggar who once served as a priest. At dessert, the pope asks him to hear his confession. “I cannot do that,” the man replies, “I have renounced the priesthood. My priestly faculties have been taken away from me. I am no longer a priest.” The pope answers, “Once a priest, always a priest… As Bishop of Rome and head of the Catholic Church I can restore your priestly faculties to you…” The man’s priesthood is restored and he hears the pope’s confession. The priest is then assigned to the church where he had previously begged with a special responsibility for the poor who seek alms at the church door.
The Persecuted Refugees
A: As the cause advances to beatify Pius XII (the pope who reigned during the Second World War) the current pope personally investigates his predecessor’s record in the Vatican’s Secret Archives. When the pope concludes that Pius XII should have done more to save persecuted Jews from the Nazis, he places the entire beatification project on (permanent) hold.
B: The pope intervenes to help when a religious minority is threatened by an evil state. He facilitates the safe escape of thousands, even housing refugees within Rome’s convents and monasteries and at the Vatican itself. When peace returns, a world-famous agnostic scientist declares, “Only the Catholic Church protested against this onslaught on liberty. Up till then I had not been interested in the Church, but today I feel a great admiration for the Church, which alone has had the courage to struggle for spiritual truth and moral liberty.”
A Target of Controversy
A: After the pope describes the theory of evolution as being “more than just a hypothesis,” right-wing Catholic extremists plot to kill him for teaching heresy. After the nearly-successful bomb plot is thwarted, the pope laments the need to ‘lead our Church out of the Dark Ages.’
B: A Muslim gunman critically-wounds the pope as he greets crowds of pilgrims in St. Peter’s square. After the pope’s recovery from four gunshot wounds, he visits his would-be assassin in prison, enters his cell, and forgives him.
Which of these plot-lines could more believably appear on television? While the “A” stories above are my own works of fiction, each “B” story relates a true incident. The episode of the dinner guest who heard Pope John Paul II’s confession is told in an article by K. D’Encer entitled “The Priest, the Beggar and the Pope.” It was Pope Pius XII who hid and helped thousands of Jews during WWII, and the agnostic scientist who praised the Catholic Church for defending his people was Albert Einstein. St. John Paul II did call evolution “more than just a hypothesis” but no reactionary Catholic extremists tried to kill him for expressing this non-heretical view. In 1983, Pope John Paul visited Mehmet Ali Ağca, the man who had tried to kill him two years prior, and forgave him face-to-face.
This is not to say that a truly great drama about the papacy would or should ignore the realities of darkness, sin, and division. But secular treatments of the Catholic Church in this world trace her shadows without acknowledging her light. As the Latin adage says, “No one gives what he does not have.” (Nemo dat quod non habet.) Lacking a well-formed faith, no screenwriter can be expected to do justice to Jesus’ Church in its complex but saving reality.
St. Irenaeus of Lyon on Sacred Tradition
June 28, 2016From Against Heresies, written around 180 AD:
“It is within the power of all… in every Church, who may wish to see the Truth, to contemplate clearly the Tradition of the apostles manifested throughout the whole world; and we are in a position to reckon up those who were by the apostles instituted bishops in the Churches, and [to demonstrate] the succession of these men to our own times; those who neither taught nor knew of anything like what these [heretics] rave about. …
[It] is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree with this Church [the very great, the very ancient, and universally known Church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul] on account of its preeminent authority…”
Almost Nobody Hates the Church
June 22, 2016
Bishop Fulton Sheen (1895-1979) was dubbed “the first televangelist” by TIME magazine in 1952. His Emmy-winning TV show, Life is Worth Living, was watched by up to 30 million people weekly. His cause for sainthood is currently being advanced by his home diocese of Peoria, IL.
The Venerable Fulton J. Sheen made this observation in his 1938 foreword to Radio Replies, a Catholic apologetics book:
“There are not over a hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions, however, who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church — which is, of course, quite a different thing. These millions can hardly be blamed for hating Catholics because Catholics ‘adore statues’; because they ‘put the Blessed Mother on the same level with God’; because they say ‘indulgence is a permission to commit sin’; because the Pope ‘is a Fascist’; because the ‘Church is the defender of Capitalism.’ If the Church taught or believed any one of these things it should be hated, but the fact is that the Church does not believe nor teach any one of them. It follows then that the hatred of the millions is directed against error and not against truth. As a matter of fact, if we Catholics believed all of the untruths and lies which were said against the Church, we probably would hate the Church a thousand times more than they do.
If I were not a Catholic, and were looking for the true Church in the world today, I would look for the one Church which did not get along well with the world; in other words, I would look for the Church which the world hates… Look for the Church that is hated by the world, as Christ was hated by the world. Look for the Church which is accused of being behind the times, as Our Lord was accused of being ignorant and never having learned. Look for the Church which men sneer at as socially inferior, as they sneered at Our Lord because He came from Nazareth. Look for the Church which is accused of having a devil, as Our Lord was accused of being possessed by Beelzebub, the Prince of Devils. Look for the Church which, in seasons of bigotry, men say must be destroyed in the name of God as men crucified Christ and thought they had done a service to God. Look for the Church which the world rejects because it claims it is infallible, as Pilate rejected Christ because He called Himself the Truth. Look for the Church which is rejected by the world as Our Lord was rejected by men…
If then, the hatred of the Church is founded on erroneous beliefs, it follows that basic need of the day is instruction. Love depends on knowledge for we cannot aspire nor desire the unknown.
Our great country is filled with what might be called marginal Christians, i.e., those who live on the fringe of religion and who are descendants of Christian living parents, but who now are Christians only in name. They retain a few of its ideals out of indolence and force of habit; they knew the glorious history of Christianity only through certain emasculated forms of it, which have married the spirit of the age and are now dying with it. Of Catholicism and its sacraments, its pardon, its grace, its certitude and its peace, they know nothing except a few inherited prejudices. And yet they are good people who want to do the right thing, but who have no definite philosophy concerning it. They educate their children without religion, and yet they resent the compromising morals of their children. They would be angry if you told them they were not Christian, and yet they do not believe that Christ is God. They resent being called pagans and yet they never take a practical cognizance of the existence of God. There is only one thing of which they are certain and that is that things are not right as they are. It is just that single certitude which makes them what might be called the great “potentials,” for they are ready to be pulled in either of two directions. Within a short time they must take sides; they must either gather with Christ or they must scatter; they must either be with Him or against Him; they must either be on the cross as other Christs, or under it as other executioners. Which way will these marginal Christians tend?… Only this much is certain. Being human and having hearts they want more than class struggle and economics; they want Life, they want Truth, and they want Love. In a word, they want Christ.
It is to these millions who believe wrong things about the Church and to these marginal Christians, that this little book is sent. It is not to prove that they are ‘wrong’; it is not to prove that we are ‘right’; it is merely to present the truth in order that the truth may conquer through the grace of God.”
June 26th Parish Bulletin
June 22, 2016The St. Wenceslaus parish bulletin (PDF) for the 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time on June 26th, 2016.
Sacred Heart Milestones
June 19, 2016The Year in Review: January 2015—June 2016
New Christians — Baptisms
Isabel Buck Peyton McCullick
New Tabernacles — First Communions
Trisha Gillitzer Zoey Jelinek
Brooke Mitchell Samantha Nagel
Savannah Swatek Brett Wagner
Elizabeth Wright Natalie Wright
Greater Temples — Confirmations
Jacob Bird Erica Boylen
Isaac Byrne Katie Friar
Tanner Gillitzer Tyler Gillitzer
Siena Krachey Adam Martin
Trent McCullick
Passings — Funerals
Virginia Fillbach Marian Frey
Florence Olson Virginia Romanek
Georgeine McCloskey
St. Wenceslaus Milestones
June 19, 2016The Year in Review: May 2015—June 2016
New Christians — Baptisms
Brynlee Becwar Addison Simmons
Hayden Stuckey Andrew Steiner
Brennen Schramm Maverick Hird
Bridget Kansier RaeLi Cullen
Roawynn Cullen Rhett Cullen
Charles Walz Arie Molini
Oliver Polodna Theodore Millin
Charlotte Millin Kassie Hamilton
Macie Slama Gwen Martin
Finnley Corlett
New Tabernacles — First Communions
2015:
Rita Achenbach Tatiana Dodge
Tucker DuCharme Owen Oppriecht
Thomas Sprosty Sophia Walz
2016:
Kari Oppriecht Lonnie Achenbach
Kassie Hamilton Tegan DuCharme
Hunter Hagensick Benjamin Kramer
Nicholas Liedtke Emma Udelhoven
Claudia Walz Elisia Wynos
Greater Temples — Confirmations
Kari Oppriecht Lonnie Achenbach
Kassie Hamilton Matthew Kramer
Stephen Ronnfeldt Timothy Sprosty Jr.
Andrew Wall Hannah Whiteaker
Brooke Wright Isaiah Teynor
New Catholics — Full Communions
Kari Oppriecht Lonnie Achenbach
Kassie Hamilton
Holy Unions — Marriages
Brandon & Jaymee Jerrett
Shawn & Audrie Schlee
Michael & Amanda Cullen
Passings — Funerals
Walter Pauer Bridget Achenbach
Kristina Colson Mae Sprosty
Charles Shinko Dale Duha
Merrill McMillin John F. Walz
Lola Mae Shinko Bernard Boylen
Lawrence Pelock
The Catechism on Current Events
June 19, 2016On June 12, 2016, a gunman murdered 49 persons at a gay nightclub in Orlando. Discussions of terrorism and new gun control laws have followed. Below are teachings from The Catechism of the Catholic Church:
On Murder & Terrorism (CCC 2268, 2297)
The fifth commandment forbids direct and intentional killing as gravely sinful. The murderer and those who cooperate voluntarily in murder commit a sin that cries out to heaven for vengeance.
Terrorism threatens, wounds, and kills indiscriminately; it is gravely against justice and charity.
On Persons with Same-Sex Attractions (CCC 2357-2359)
Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.
The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.
Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.
On Government Authority (See CCC 1897-1927)
Every human community needs an authority to govern it. … Its role is to ensure as far as possible the Common Good of the society. The authority required by the moral order derives from God… (see Romans 13:1-2.) [Authority] must not behave in a despotic manner, but must act for the Common Good as a moral force based on freedom and a sense of responsibility. A human law has the character of law to the extent that it accords with right reason, and thus derives from the eternal law. … If rulers were to enact unjust laws or take measures contrary to the moral order, such arrangements would not be binding in conscience. In such a case, “authority breaks down completely and results in shameful abuse.” (Pope St. John XXIII) The Common Good consists of three essential elements: respect and promotion of the fundamental rights of the person; development of the spiritual & temporal goods of society; and the peace & security of society and its members.
On Legitimate Self-Defense (CCC 2263-2264)
The legitimate defense of persons and societies is not an exception to the prohibition against the murder of the innocent that constitutes intentional killing. “The act of self-defense can have a double effect: the preservation of one’s own life; and the killing of the aggressor. … The one is intended, the other is not.” (St. Thomas Aquinas)
Love toward oneself remains a fundamental principle of morality. Therefore it is legitimate to insist on respect for one’s own right to life. Someone who defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor a lethal blow: “If a man in self-defense uses more than necessary violence, it will be unlawful: whereas if he repels force with moderation, his defense will be lawful. … Nor is it necessary for salvation that a man omit the act of moderate self-defense to avoid killing the other man, since one is bound to take more care of one’s own life than of another’s.” (St. Thomas Aquinas)
June 19th Parish Bulletin
June 18, 2016The St. Wenceslaus parish bulletin for the 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time on June 19th, 2016.
June 12th Parish Bulletin
June 8, 2016The St. Wenceslaus parish bulletin for the 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time on June 12th, 2016.
Aphantasia — A Corpus Christi Homily
June 5, 2016Aphantasia (Greek for “without fantasy”) has been written about since 1880 but it has recently gained increased attention. To understand what I am talking about, picture a red triangle, a horse running, or the house where you grew up. With a moment’s attention you can see them in your mind. However, people with Aphantasia are incapable of voluntarily forming images in their mind’s-eye.
Blake, a successful 30-year-old software engineer only recently learned he experienced the world differently from others. He relates a conversation similar to this with a Facebook friend:
—If I ask you to imagine a beach, how would you describe what happens in your mind?
—Uhh, I imagine a beach. What?
—Like, the idea of a beach. Right?
—Well, there are waves, sand. Umbrellas. It’s a relaxing picture. Are you okay?
— But it’s not actually a picture? There’s no visual component, right?
—Yes, there is, in my mind. What are you talking about?
—Is it in color?
—Yes…
—How often do your thoughts have a visual element?
—A thousand times a day?
—Oh, my goodness…
If someone were to ask Blake to “imagine a beach,” he could ruminate on the concept of a beach: it has sand, waves, heat, sun. He could recognize a beach when he saw one, but even if he were standing on a beach he could not recreate or remember the image with his eyes closed.
Philip is a 42-year old photographer from Toronto. He is happily married, but he cannot conjure up his wife’s face (or any other image) in his mind’s eye. He was recently listening to a podcast presenter describing aphantasia. He says it came as a complete surprise, “I was like ‘what do you mean? People do that?’” He thought it was a joke so he checked with his four-year old daughter. “I asked her whether she could picture an apple in her mind, she said ‘yeah, it’s green’. I was shocked.”
A 2009 survey of 2,500 people suggests that aphantasia is the experience of about 2% of people. So far, I have found it in two of my friends, including a fellow priest. He tells me that when our spiritual director in seminary would tells us to prayerfully picture ourselves, say, at the table of the Last Supper he thought it was just a metaphor. He was surprised to learn that when people “counted sheep” to fall asleep that was more than just a figure of speech.
Disbelief is a common response when people on either side of this phenomena hear that other people do no experience the world like themselves. (“That’s impossible. You’re lying. You’re pulling my leg.”) However, unless we happen to carry around an MRI machine, we have to take our friend at his or her word in order to know the truth. And here we come to the connection with this Feast of Corpus Christi.
An extraordinary experience at the center of our Faith is founded upon a trust in our friend Jesus Christ’s testimony. At the Last Supper, Jesus does not say, “This is like my body,” or “This symbolizes or represents my body.” He says, “This is my body.” Around the year 150 AD, St. Justin Martyr described what early Christians everywhere believed about these words:
“The apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them; that Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks, said, “Do this in remembrance of Me, this is My body;” and that, after the same manner, having taken the cup and given thanks, He said, “This is My blood” … “This food is called among us the Eucharist… For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Savior, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh.”
The Church has always proclaimed and worshiped Jesus Christ as truly present, body, blood, soul, and divinity in the Eucharist. This belief has been confirmed for us throughout the centuries. The Holy Spirit, whom Jesus promised would lead us to all truth and remind us of all that he told us, has reaffirmed this teaching in Councils of the Church. Jesus has also allowed Eucharistic miracles to unveil this mystery we cannot normally perceive. For instance, at the Miracle of Lanciano in eighth century AD, a priest who was doubting Jesus’ Real Presence witnessed the bread become flesh and the wine become blood (which coagulated and broke into five globules in the chalice) as he said the words of consecration. In 1971, scientific analysis indicated that, as at similar miracles, the Host was human cardiac muscle. Who would go through such trouble when a fraudster’s more convenient use of pig’s flesh would have been undetectable? The truth is that Jesus gives us his heart in the Eucharist, along with his whole self. You can go to Lanciano, Italy and behold this Host today.
For many Christians, the Lord’s Supper is merely a symbolic commemoration, a ritual that remembers him. But if Jesus is everywhere, then he is nowhere. It then impossible to physically draw near to him any place on earth. Unless you are blessed with a vision of Jesus, you can never see him with your eyes or touch him in your flesh until after your death and resurrection. But with the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, “Behold, I am with you always…”
If you have always enjoyed mental images, or if you have received the Real Presence of Jesus in Holy Communion since you were a child, then you may not appreciate the gift you have. If you experience aphantasia, or if you have never believed in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, then you may not even know what you are missing. So for our non-Catholic family and friends, tell them about this treasure—Jesus wants them to receive him, too. And for ourselves, let us truly appreciate the incredible gift that we are blessed to receive.
June 5th Parish Bulletin
June 3, 2016The St. Wenceslaus parish bulletin for the 10th Sunday in Ordinary Time on June 5th, 2016.
9th Week in Ordinary Time—Year II Meditations & Homily Builder
May 29, 2016Monday, 9th Week in Ordinary Time—Year II
- Evil desire causes the world’s corruption; the injustice, theft, and murder in the vineyard.
- The tenants were unfaithful, vicious, ignorant, rash, fickle, disloyal, and cold, for they lacked love.
- Though the prophets and God’s son were slain, they now dwell and abide with the Most High,
Petitions: Loving Stewardship, Renters, Justice
Tuesday, 9th Week in Ordinary Time—Year II
- Like Jesus’ either/or-defying answer, we’re to “wait for and hasten the coming of the day of God.”
- As gold is perishable even though tested by fire, money will not outlive this creation. (1 Peter 1:7)
- Jesus’ patience gave the Pharisees, the Herodians, and Caesar a chance for salvation.
Petitions: Active Contempatives, Corrupted Leaders, Generosity
Wednesday, 9th Week in Ordinary Time—Year II
- Timothy had greater knowledge of the Scriptures and of God’s miracles than the Sadducees.
- We are confident that the God of the living is able to guard the life entrusted to us forever.
- Jesus was unashamed to testify to the resurrection, for there was nothing to be ashamed of.
Petitions: Young Priests, Courageous Testimony, Beloved Dead
Thursday, 9th Week in Ordinary Time—Year II
- Notwithstanding history’s “first” commandment, Jesus was a celibate workman for God.
- Faithfulness to him requires not only external sacrifice, but love for God and neighbor.
- Jesus was not “disputing about words,” but answering questions that mattered.
Petitions: Catholic Apologists, The Falsely Accused, Civility
Friday, 9th Week in Ordinary Time—Year II
- “All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful,” but the Word Incarnate is richer.
- Remaining “faithful to what you have learned” allows mysteries to be unveiled to us.
- All religious Christians will be persecuted, but all enemies shall be placed under his feet.
Petitions: Scripture Study, Our Persecutors, Patient Endurance
Parishable Items 