News - May 2020 RSS Feed

Catholics celebrate the Feast of the Guardian Angels on Oct. 2 because every individual has a guardian angel, and awareness of our guardian angel can be a comfort and aid in our spiritual growth. Belief in guardian angels is a common-sense implication from many passages of Scripture. For instance, “For he will give his angels charge of you to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone.” (Ps 91:11-12) Besides, the joy of the young couple is infectious!

These millennials and Gen Zers sense the hollowness of the postmodern cultural wasteland. They also reject the shallowness of the mainline Protestant churches that have watered-down supernatural truths and exalted the trivial. These online pilgrims detest the barren, ugly and brutal aspects of modern life. They want something real and profound. Their penchant for returning to the Middle Ages represents the liberals’ worst nightmare. What disconcerts liberals is not the attraction these young Christians have for traditional forms, but their rejection of the liberal order’s a-metaphysical foundation. That rejection is accelerated by the political and economic breakdown of that order wrought by the coronavirus.

‘Memorial Day honors those brave women and men who proudly wore the uniform of our armed forces and made the ultimate sacrifices that have become the lifeblood of our republic,’ said Bishop David O’Connell of Trenton.

"There is no greater love, says the Lord, than to lay down one's life for a (stranger)"

Turn off the noise! Tune into God!

Treating human beings as goods to be ordered, produced, and sold is a severe violation of human dignity. The bishops’ appeal hit the nail on the head: the double crime of surrogate motherhood violates the rights of the children and the dignity of women, who for various motives – especially economic hardship – are forced to sell their bodies and motherhood. Surrogacy is an offense against women; how can you “rent” the body of another human being? And how does paying the rent make you a parent? Motherhood is not merchandise and should not be for sale. The bond between mother and child is forged at conception in the womb; no one has the right to break that bond.

The more we practice loving, generous, cheerful service at home, the more the service we give to people outside our homes will be genuine (instead of self-aggrandizing) and properly-ordered (instead of competing with our domestic-church life).

In a previous episode, Fr. Mike said that all Catholics grow in the same “soil” together, but the fruit we bear is unique. But what is this common soil? What are the essentials for every Catholic Christian? During the Easter Season, we read from the Acts of the Apostles. In Acts 2:42, we are told what the soil is made of: “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” So there are four elements in the soil: Teachings of the Apostles: Magisterial teaching of the Church, Sacred Scripture, and Tradition. Communal Life (Fellowship): It’s not just me praying to Jesus. We need to share life somehow. Breaking of the Bread: This refers to the Mass, not just eating together. Prayer: There are so many ways to pray as a Catholic, and so many awesome prayers. You can pray the Liturgy of the Hours with the Church, or in your own words, or both. But to be in the soil you have to pray. For a great Liturgy of the Hours app, check out iBreviary. God wants us to flourish in faith, hope, and love for him and for others. He is the one who makes us grow in holiness, but in order to flourish we have to be nourished by the soil he gave us.

Please listen to Father Mike's opening comments and his homily. He presents some powerful points for reflection on why we go to Mass, and what it means in this time of exile.

The Church, rather than secular technocratic institutions, is equipped to perform the role of mother and guide because it does not offer something dreamt up in a philosophe’s cafe or government office, but its very self: “After all the Church is not an ideal to be striven for: she exists and they’re within her.” The Church engages cultures and peoples as they are, in their givenness: “Our Father takes our poor world as it is, not like the charlatans who manufacture one on paper and keep on reforming it, still on paper.”

“religious faith is the strongest bond for any human society, especially when times are tough. Both of these truths are eminently borne out by all that we know about human cultures . . .”

Though companionship is certainly a wonderful side-benefit of a healthy marriage, God didn’t create marriage to solve Adam’s loneliness problem. Check the text again: He created marriage to solve Adam’s aloneness problem. It’s an important distinction that not only explains what marriage is for, but sets the groundwork for all of the moral expectations God gives us about sex and marriage.

Our brothers and sisters are being tortured and dying for the faith. Are we willing to give up Sunday soccer, defend human life, or defend what it means to be men and women in the image and likeness of God?

“The most important person on earth is a mother. She cannot claim the honor of having built Notre Dame Cathedral. She need not. “She has built something more magnificent than any cathedral – a dwelling for an immortal soul, the tiny perfection of her baby’s body… “The angels have not been blessed with such a grace. They cannot share in God’s creative miracle to bring new saints to Heaven. Only a human mother can. “Mothers are closer to God the Creator than any other creature; God joins forces with mothers in performing this act of creation… “What on God’s good earth is more glorious than this; to be a mother?” –Cardinal Mindszenty

"The downturn may well occasion a rise in the prominence and influence of ecclesial movements, whose lay members generally give far more time than other Catholics to missionary work, and often with more evangelical fervor. It may also occasion the emergence of small tight-knit faith communities within parishes, who meet regularly in homes, rather than in large parish events. It might even occasion a rise in the frequency of catechesis undertaken mostly at home, by parents themselves. The downturn might also occasion a new zeal, and opportunity, for evangelization, as people shaken by the pandemic and its aftershocks find themselves looking for meaning. That new evangelization will likely be undertaken organically, which is say to cheaply, rather than by professional initiatives driven by expensive and time-consuming pastoral plans."

The God of the Bible is not just a god, a “creator” in that Bible story, the way Zeus or Odin are characters in their stories. He is the God who is the Creator of the universe’s story – the Creator of everything that has existence: every quasar, every black hole, every galaxy, every quark, every neutrino, every cosmic force, and every person who ever lived. As C.S. Lewis once said: “Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”

We are the people of Hope.

11 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you." Matthew 5:11-12

“For me, at this juncture in my life, I know this is what God has put me here to do: in a very imperfect way, as a human, to be a vessel for the Spirit of his Son to work through this TV project; to work through this prayer time online … to be able to be transparent about my faith and incorporate it into my art. I think people are hungry for it. I think the fact that we’re going through this pandemic has allowed people to reevaluate their relationships to their Creator, or even start looking for that relationship. If I can lead them to Christ in some way, I feel that that’s what I’m here to do.”

This Sunday, let us pause from our own suffering, from our yearning for the Eucharistic and the communal celebration of Mass, to offer prayers and actions on behalf of our persecuted brothers and sisters.