Father Columba explains the importance of Confession and the Mass.
Why only take a thimble-full of Living Water when God offers the entire ocean?
Category: Uncategorized
What’s the Purpose?
What’s the purpose of our lives? For what were we made? To have fun? To be happy? Or is the answer something simpler, but also much deeper?
In this video, Father Mike reaffirms that the meaning of life for us as Christians and Catholics is to know and love God. Our Creator made us for this purpose. Along the way of our life journey, we were also made for work, to love one another, and to sacrifice. While attending closely to how the Holy Spirit is moving in our hearts, we are also to gaze outward and upward, seeking the will of the One who made us and being obedient to Him.
So, what’s the purpose of our lives? Let’s ask God to show us. He’s eagerly awaiting our questions.
All In?
Bishop Barron has said, and I paraphrase, “The trouble with religion is not that it asks too much of us, but that it doesn’t ask enough.” In this video, Peter Herbeck discusses what it is to be wholly converted and dedicated to evangelization, as our faith calls us be.
Are we going through the motions of worship or prayer? Do we have a Catholic checklist? Do we feel unfulfilled in our faith? If so, maybe we need to reassess not only what we’re doing, but also who and whose we are.
Are we on the outskirts of our faith, or are we all in, each day discovering who we are in Christ?
We Cannot Do It Alone
Are You Suffering For the Sake of the Truth?
The grace of God will inspire and protect you, even in the face of danger and persecution.
“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thes 5:16-18).
What Kind of Generation?
Matt Fradd (Pints with Aquinas) recently gave this presentation in Sydney, Australia. With his measured but also emphatic tone, Matt shares that it is essential we get clear on how the culture has radically shifted and that we must reclaim it with morality and virtue. We can only do this by returning in a serious way to our faith. As Bishop Barron has declared numerous times, it’s not that our Catholic faith asks too much of us; it’s that it doesn’t ask enough.
Only by observing reality and declaring the truth in charity and with compassion can we, by God’s grace, help to reorder our culture to the good and the beautiful.
Welcome God
Father Kirby invites us to live our faith, fully and openly. Truth and true happiness can only come from living in accordance not with an identity forged in secular culture, but rather with our identity born and shaped in Christ. T
he culture will seduce us into self-actualization, telling us we create ourselves and faith is only to be lived in private. God tells us, however, that we are called to be disciples and to live as people of faith in the world. May this new year be the beginning of living our true identity in and through Him.
Living in Right Order as a Family
“Brothers and sisters: Put on, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if one has had grievance against another; as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do. And over all these put on love, that is, the bond of perfection. And let the peace of Christ control your hearts, the peace into which you were also called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, as in all wisdom you teach and admonish one another, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Wives, be subordinate to your husbands, as is proper in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and avoid any bitterness toward them. Children, obey your parents in everything, for this is pleasing to the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children, so they may not become discouraged” (2 Col 3:12-21).
Today, to begin the New Year, we celebrate the Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God. We ask the Blessed Mother to keep us close to Jesus through her loving heart. Fittingly, yesterday, we celebrated the Feast of the Holy Family. On that day, we are called to see Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, each holy and perfected, as the example of how to lead our lives in community devoted to God. In addition to the Holy Family, yesterday’s Second Reading presents instructions for how to live with others in right order. With Christ at the center of all we do, we are to be compassionate, kind, humble, gentle, patient, and forgiving. We are to be thankful and lovingly correct one another. We are to honor the natural hierarchical order of the family. Rather than an arena of power struggles and contentiousness, this order, based on mutual respect and love, promotes encouragement, freedom, and the love of God.
At a time when the family is under attack; when chaos undermines the very foundation of male and female; and when the culture actively seeks to destroy life, taint childhood, and turn parents and children against one another, we are called to turn to the Holy Family for guidance and reassurance. Before Sister Lucia dos Santos, one of the three children of Fatima, died, she declared that the final battle between Christ and Satan would be over marriage and family. “The final battle between the Lord and the kingdom of Satan,” she wrote, “will be about marriage and the family.” She added, however, that “Our Lady has already crushed Satan’s head.”
As individuals as well as members of families and communities, let us look to Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Regardless of what the culture tells us, let us remain faithful to their example of communal holiness, connected through faith and devotion to God and who he calls us to be.
What The Visitation Teaches Us About Who We Are Called to Be in Christ
During the final days of Advent, we read one of my favorite scripture passages, Luke 1:39-45: The Visitation. In a series of verses just preceding this one, Gabriel announces it is Mary who has been chosen by God to bear the Christ and that her cousin, Elizabeth, despite her “old age,” is also expecting a baby (John the Baptist). Filled with the Holy Spirit, Mary “set out…in haste” (Lk 1:39); she ran (because the Holy Spirit is a Being of action and movement) to her cousin, literally to share the Lord with her and assist during the last months of her pregnancy.
When Mary arrives, Elizabeth, also filled with the Holy Spirit, immediately acknowledges her as the Blessed Mother and rejoices that “the mother of my Lord should come to me.” This is a joy-filled encounter of mutual recognition and thanksgiving. What’s more, Elizabeth not only hails Mary as the Mother of God, she also praises and blesses her for being open to and trusting Him, for it is only through Mary’s faith and fiat that God’s will is accomplished. Elizabeth rightly proclaims that Mary is blessed in her spiritual motherhood. Just as important, though, her fullness of grace is realized because she first “believed that what was spoken to [her] by the Lord would be fulfilled.” It is Mary’s faith and openness to God that leads to the fulfillment of our salvation.
We have made our way through Advent, filled with quiet and patient waiting for Jesus’s coming. Now celebrating the Christmas Octave, may we reflect on the glory and hope of Christ’s birth and remember the encounter of these faithful cousins. Open to God’s love and willing to trust and believe in His goodness, may they inspire us to repeatedly order ourselves to Him so as to fully participate in His salvific love.
What the Canaanite Woman Teaches Us
And Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Si’don. And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and cried, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely possessed by a demon. But he did not answer her a word. And his disciples came and begged him, saying, “Send her away, for she is crying after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” And he answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed instantly (Matt 15:21-28).
Today’s reading is so rich, we can approach it from a myriad angles. This is a passage about how Jesus teaches us; about the perseverance of faith; about healing; about the Lord eventually spreading his Word to all peoples. In addition, because of some recent thoughts I bring to today’s reading, I am particularly focused on what this passage shows us about a mother’s love for and devotion to her child.
Today motherhood, indeed womanhood itself, is under attack. Childhood, for that matter, is prey to those who seek to destroy innocence as well. I cannot shake what I saw this week in the news. Health Secretary Rachel Levine praised an Alaska gender-affirming “care” clinic, seeking to replace the term “mother” with “egg producer,” “carrier,” “gestational parent,” or “birth parent,” and the word “men” with “XY individuals.” This facility also argues that the term “gender reveal party” be replaced with “embryogenesis parties” or “chromosome reveal parties” (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12413023/Bidens-trans-health-secretary-Dr-Rachel-Levine-praises-Alaska-gender-affirming-care-clinic-wants-word-mother-replaced-phrase-EGG-PRODUCER.html).
What does this insanity have to do with today’s Gospel? If we are to return to the reality of who we are in Christ, we must be able to clearly see the culture for what it is, filled with chaos and lies, and then reject it, pointing instead to what is good, true, virtuous. It is tempting to reject the culture as ridiculous and unworthy of attention given these absurd arguments. But we would be naive and irresponsible to do so. Among the many terrible consequences of such language, perhaps the worst is that it is designed to dehumanize that human person. “Egg producer,” “carrier,” etc. are not only terms meant to foster a gender neutral society devoid of male and female, they are also distinctly utilitarian terms. They reduce the human being, in this case the woman, to nothing more than a flesh factory useful for and defined by her parts. (Pretty ironic given that the proponents of this ideology seek to persecute those who praise women for their physical attributes.)
To return to the Gospel, what is scripture teaching us about such matters? Here is a woman–not a birthing person, not a carrier–who is risking everything to help her child. She has left the comfort of her home and her people. In her desperate attempt to attract Jesus, the apostles become irritated with her and desire to send her away. Jesus, too, shows uncharacteristic indifference to her, likening her to dogs–Gentiles not yet worthy of His conversion. But there is more at work here. Jesus shows us time and again that our first interpretation is probably not the whole or even correct one.
Indeed, Jesus is not willfully uncaring or apathetic here. He recognizes this woman’s need from the beginning. Rather than a sign of indifference, Jesus’s silence, nay His seeming rejection, is actually an expression of love–a means of teaching her and refining her faith. Knowing her devotion to her child, He is testing and provoking her, and she responds by persevering and meeting the Lord where he seeks to take her. The Canaanite woman represents the heart of a mother who is willing to be humbled before God for the sake of her child. This is only the second example of Jesus healing from a distance, and it is the mother’s faith and her relationship with God that inspires it. Jesus teaches us through her example.
This passage exhorts us to ask, What do we believe about the virtue of life and motherhood? Are we glib and relativistic about it? Are we lazy about today’s language, shrugging it off as simply nonsensical and unimportant? Or in our desire to develop our relationship with Jesus, are we willing to become humble, express our vulnerability to God, and risk everything in an attempt to open our hearts, grow in our faith, and petition for the needs of others?
In today’s Morning Offering, Father Kirby likens the Canaanite woman to us as we journey in our “discipleship.” He explains:
The Lord Jesus…wants to teach us, guide us, take us deeper and deeper into what it is to love. He wants to refine our faith to such an extent that we know that we just have to be with Him. If He listens to us and grants our requests, if He makes things easy or difficult, if He blesses us with health and wealth or poverty and illness, that we will be with Him. The call of Christian discipleship is to be with the Lord Jesus, to be in His presence, to be His friend. St. Teresa of Avila says it best: ‘We worship the God of consolations, not the consolations of God.’ The Lord Jesus seeks to refine our faith–to draw us deeper and deeper into what it means to believe in Him, to be with Him….(https://www.goodcatholic.com/podcasts/morning-offering-with-fr-kirby/).
May we continue to learn from scripture how to be in the world–a world full of struggle and pain and difficulty, but one that also inspires us to return to what is true. The Canaanite woman shows us what it is to humble ourselves before the God who knows our hearts and seeks to heal us in all things. Let us pray that we might have her courage and be examples of true womanhood and motherhood for the sake of our children and the salvation of our souls.
Sistering to Sophia 