23rd Sunday After Pentecost 2017
Everyone can fast from something to increase their desire for God.
22nd Sunday After Pentecost
This Sunday sermon is about why Jesus was not a people-pleaser, and why you shouldn't be one either.
Christ the King Sunday Sermon
This is sermon is about the separation of Church and State and what to expect at the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. As always, thanks to the Benedictines of Mary who have graciously allowed me to use their music as my podcast bumpers.
Carta Abierta a Un Sacerdote
Una pareja católica escribió una carta anónima a su pastor y a cada sacerdote. Ellos asisten a la Missa de forma ordinaria en la zona oeste de los E.U. Son buenos amigos míos desde hace 10 años. Me pidieron que lo publique en mi blog. Padre, Estoy muy agradecido que haya dedicado su vida a ser nuestro padre espiritual. Estoy agradecido por los regalos que nos ha puesto a disposición en los sacramentos. Sabemos que usted trabaja incansablemente para mantener todo equilibrado y funcionando sin problemas. Por eso estamos agradecidos. Debemos ser sinceros y divulgar nuestras preocupaciones y frustraciones: hemos escuchado más acerca de la comunidad LGBTQ y la aceptación de eso más de lo que hemos escuchado sobre nuestro propio matrimonio. Padre, luchamos con la comunicación, luchamos con la infertilidad, luchamos con el perdón por la infidelidad, luchamos con [...]
Open Letter to a Priest
A Catholic married couple with children wrote an anonymous letter to their parish priest, to every priest. They attend the ordinary Mass in English out West. They have been good friends of mine for almost a decade, and they asked me to publish it here. Open Letter to our spiritual Fathers Dear Fr. ___________, I am so very thankful that you have given your life to be our spiritual father. I am grateful for the gifts you make available to us in the sacraments. We know you work tirelessly to keep everything balanced and running smoothly. For that, we are thankful. But we have to be honest and share our concerns and frustrations: We have heard more about the LGBTQ community and the acceptance of that more than we have ever heard about our own marriage. Father, we struggle with [...]
20th Sunday After Pentecost
This Holy Mass was offered for the soul of Christopherson Cortes. Ora pro nobis if you're already at the finish line.
19th Sunday After Pentecost
This sermon is about Catholic entitlement versus Catholic reverence. The photo on the blog is the 1956 wedding of Prince Rainier and Grace Kelly, showing reverence for God and spouse.
18th Sunday After Pentecost
The Little Way as Spiritual Warfare: Lining up the Liturgy of several seemingly-unconnected saints this past week: St. Michael the Archangel, St. Therese, St. Francis, Mother Mary and the Gospel of the 18th Sunday After Pentecost.
Mary: God’s First Love
Although the pro-life movement’s arguments can be proved from science as much as religion, one of the reasons that I am so involved in the pro-life movement is based on this piece of theology: God imagined every person as an unrepeatable blueprint long before their conception. Since God is the exclusive Creator of the Universe, and since God is in eternity (two philosophical necessities to a world with only One God) this means that God imagined the blueprint to each person’s genome long before an individual zygote was ever conceived. Of course, “imagined” and “before” are words that fail us, especially since we are speaking of a God who exists outside of time with a “mind" that is obviously not a physical cerebrum. It is good that we say in the pro-life movement: “From the moment of conception you were [...]
Hugh Hefner Part II
My last blog post called How Many Will Be Saved? had a lot of shares but also a lot of critique. This makes for good Catholic dialogue. I want to respond in a short blog post to a few objections. St. Augustine wrote: "There are two things that kill the soul: Despair and false hope.”—St. Augustine, Sermo 87.8. Another word for “false hope” is presumption. The reason I included in my blog post all the saints’ quotes on hell was not to judge Hugh Hefner but to show how many American Catholics live in presumption of last-minute imperfect contrition. So, if someone were to read those saints’ quotes about hell and subsequently scamper from false hope to despair, it’s is proof that the third way has not been tried, namely, a realistic but supernatural hope in salvation. Roughly summarized from St. [...]