REFLECTIONS - INDEX

WHO'S MORE important to talk to than our Lord Jesus Christ who made you, loves you and saves you? Someone who’s got your cell phone number? Your email or twitter addresses? You’ve got to be kidding. Don’t think for a moment you can worship and adore when you’re caressing your cell phone and multi-tasking. It can’t happen.

Out of the dimness of snow and sleet, he saw a bird fly straight at him. He instinctively ducked as the bird flew into the window. Stunned by the invisible unyielding glass, it fell to the snow-covered ground outside. As he looked through the window at the fallen bird, another one struck the glass. Many more birds followed, all sprawling to the ground. This small flock of birds faced disaster. The birds knew their chances of staying alive in the wet bitter-cold night decreased with every gust of sleet and freezing rain. Caught out in the open by the severity of the swift blizzard, they were searching for a refuge.

IN MISERY, Mary watched the soldiers hammer then pry the nails from the cross. Lest her son’s lifeless body be further profaned, she caught Jesus in her arms and covered his nakedness with her garments. This is why I intend that no fragment of the Blessed Sacrament touch the floor of the sanctuary and be trampled underfoot inadvertently. It is the clean white corporal, do you see, that permits me to capture the smallest fraction of the living Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ and thus preserve it from possible sacrilege.

YOU PRAY when having abandoned the noise of the day, you undertake the work of contemplating God’s ideas, loving them, and obeying them to your utmost. Ask God for wisdom to understand that all his ideas really are just one idea, one Truth, one Person--Our Lord Jesus Christ through whom all things were made. [cf. Jn 1:1-3]

Everything I have comes from God. Everything I have is God's gift. Should I forget that God’s gifts to me are loaned, I will no longer deserve them. I will lose them. Every person in my life comes from God. Every person is my neighbor. Should I loan to my neighbor what God has given me, I will no longer deserve him. I will lose him. I cannot loan to my neighbor what I myself owe to God. Therefore, I may give away all good things I do not own, except one. I own the debt I owe to God.

“ROW, ROW, row your boat,” goes the children’s song, “gently down the stream.” This is my great hope, of course, that I will experience life gently as I navigate my particular tributary in the stream of time. Nevertheless, the triad row reminds me of the hard work of living. Is life merely a dream? Hardly.

Let not the discretionary behavior of any person impoverish the Mass! [cf. 1Cor 11:23-32] Finally, let us encourage one another in Christ with this message of St. Augustine: "We ourselves are the house of God. In this life we are built up to be the house of God in order to be consecrated as the house of God at the end of life. It takes much effort to build the house, but its consecration brings joy and jubilation." [Sermon 136, 1]

For years I have tried to teach Acolytes and Altar Servers an important lesson: We don't try to be perfect. Rather we strive to make an elegant recovery. The most wonderful example, of course, is Jesus' resurrection on the third day. I am convinced that for all human beings, life is lived in the recovery.

It is no act of justice to end the life of a sick person because you can’t comprehend his suffering. If you really desire natural justice, take his place in the sick bed and take his suffering into your own body. But I can’t, you answer. I understand. Then commit your beloved’s life and death to the hands of God.

I know a person who thinks faith and choosing are the same thing. He thinks his power to decide always trumps who or what he chooses. So it matters little to him whether he prefers the goddess one day or a prosperity preacher the next. For him, religion is merely a virtual world of his own making and sweetened by his own creativity.

Follow the example of Joseph of Arimethea and Mary Magdalene who helped Mary of Nazareth bury her son the Lord Jesus Christ, a criminal. Reverence the bodies of all persons who have died. For the sake of the deceased entrusted to your custody, provide him or her a proper religious funeral service in the Church and burial in consecrated ground.

Friendship with Christ consists in this: "Not that we loved God but that he loved us". [1Jn 4:10] If one must speak at all, it is far better to venture Jesus calls me friend, because this puts the emphasis on Christ where it belongs. Jesus calls me friend reminds me that his friendship is a gift, a manifestation of grace I can never earn by my own merits or cleverness or distillation. Christ will never offer his friendship to me as a thing or title or magnet. He will always offer his friendship to me as grace.

Our Lord Jesus Christ suffers for you, and he suffers your holding back from him. Perhaps there is still time for you to pause, reflect and surrender your whole heart to our crucified Lord. If you sincerely desire to console Jesus, to revive him in the midst of his suffering for you, then bring him your tears, your hunger and your distress. And let him heal you! “The Spirit is the witness, because the Spirit is the truth!” [1Jn 5:7]

Speaking of prayer: When I was seven, I prayed for a pair of wings. Real big wings with feathers. I knew that this would spark jealousy in the mere mortals of my second grade class and the roving brutes of my neighborhood. So I prayed to God for a pair of big feathered invisible wings. I promised God that I wouldn’t fly in front of anyone, and I’d never chirp about them to anyone. I would wait until the middle of the night to fly.

Heaven's ecology is not going to be fouled by a toxic dump of sins--yours or anyone else’s--at the foot of God’s throne. If God shows you mercy at the moment of your personal judgment and intends you to share life with him forever in heaven, but you are carrying unreconciled sins and have done little or no penance on earth, then you’re going to have to take your sins somewhere else and deal with them before you come back.

You who call yourself Christian, the lesson of Peter is intended for you. You take passage on the Barque of Peter, but you boast to the wind, I don't need the Church! The wind throws back your own voice to you and you claim, Jesus spoke to me. Doubt tempts you overboard and you jump for joy.

Unlike an ordinary stonemason or sculptor who chooses his stones, you do not have the luxury of picking and choosing the foundation blocks with which you are made. You must work with what God has given you. You must accept responsibility for your own labor, for the edifice entrusted to you, and the purpose to which you direct it.

Without devotion, the last defense of the human bond, a person's intellect becomes peculiarly vulnerable to meaningless self-absorption and outright error. Marriages collapse. Children abandon parents. And man turns away from the God who created him. If you fear for your Christian faith, strengthen your religious devotions. Return to your knees in private prayer and communal worship. Take up your rosary, chaplet, novena and the lives of sainted men and women.

Catholicism is a holy way of life that answers the cries of a tortured world. We speak of the peace which only Christ can give. Why only Christ? Because he alone purchased perfect peace by paying the highest price. Do you wish to share in the peace of Christ? Then you must cherish the risk and the martyrdom that won it. Embrace the cross. Kiss the wounds of our Saviour. Tell the stories of the martyrs.

JESUS SAYS, "But he to whom little is forgiven, loves little." [Lk 7:47 Douay-Rheims] If you say, I don't know of any sins, you are poor and blind indeed. If you say, my sins are nothing, you judge yourself as nothing by usurping God as judge. In either case, you have little or no love within you. For Jesus' words explain the divine law of love. If one is forgiven much, he loves much.

When a woman made bread, she set aside a small portion of the risen dough, carefully reserving it as a leaven. When the time came to bake more bread, she used the reserved leaven to make the new batch of dough rise. Thus for a family, the bread of the day made possible the bread for their tomorrow. Like leaven for the dough, our Lord Jesus Christ is the hope of God’s Kingdom. Through, with and in Christ our family of faith is magnified and our thoughts rise to God.

TO BE moved with pity is to permit the compassion of your heart to carry you into the experience of someone who suffers. To be moved means reaching out. It means speaking and touching. It brings healing, medicine for the spirit, and the renewal of relationships. Compassion makes possible the regeneration of human hope. It liberates the soul from the clench of the present moment. It quiets its trembling.

O Child of God, do you fear the hard world? Ask our Blessed Mother to guide you to faithfulness. O Child of God, do you sorrow? Pour your tears into our Blessed Mother's Immaculate Heart. O Child of God, do you suffer? Tremble with our Blessed Mother at Golgotha’s cross. O Child of God, do you lose hope? Draw courage from our Blessed Mother’s steadfast love. O Child of God, do you doubt God will hear you? Imitate our Blessed Mother’s humility, for God named her Queen of Heaven. O Child of God, may someone speak for you? Trust our Blessed Mother, for Jesus listens to all her prayers. O Child of God, rejoice, for the King of Kings has rescued his mother’s children from this faithless generation. On you, O Child, the Lord of Lords bestows a beautiful blessing, the proof of his merciful love—his Mother!

For our understanding to be comprehensive, we must acknowledge that the immortal soul is the seat—intellect (knowing) and will (freedom)—of human personhood. Thus the immortal soul, not mortal flesh, is the substantial form of the human body. The mortal body depends on the soul, but the immortal soul is not dependent on the body. This is why we know that God’s image and likeness is more perfectly revealed in the soul of a human being than in his flesh.

May God have mercy on priests who deprive the Mass of its universal beauty and dignity, who disdain the excellence of Holy Orders, and who deride the Mother who gave them birth. May priests never forget that by the “imposition of hands” over the bread and wine placed on the altar (Gk. epiclesis: invocation), they strike the rock. Holy Mother Church, may the minds and hearts of all your priests be pure to show forth the sanctity of Jesus Christ, our great High Priest.