Today we celebrate the feast day of St. Dominic. He died in 1221 at the age of fity one. St. Dominic is of course the founder of the Dominican Order.

St. Dominic was a contemporary of St. Francis of Assisi. These two great saints preaching saved many souls and encourage many souls to love God and His Catholic Church above all else.

During the time of these great saints the Church face two great struggles. The Church was at the same time for the most part very rich materially speaking, and very poor intellectually and spiritually speaking. That is so many in the Church were not only very attached to material possessions but even more so had placed their trust in the powers of this world to save them. While at the same time, they were woefully ignorant of the teachings of the Church, and so did not live those teachings in their daily lives in order to merit salvation-they were starving to death spiritually.

And so God raised up two great saints to help the Church of the day, Dominic the great intellectual and preacher of the truths of the faith and Francis the poor friar who called the Church to simplicity of life, trust in God before all else and love of Him above all else. Neumann

I think its important here to state that even though both saints had their own particular charism, both saints, like have all saints, cared for the materially poor; but at the same time, saw that the poorest of the poor were actually those who don’t know the love of God, and His teachings, the teachings of His Church and so don’t place adoration and worship as the primary action of their lives. And these could be both rich or poor materially speaking.


I think one could argue that the crisis of the Church in Dominic’s age and Francis age is very much the same in our age. Our Church, that is her members, so many are very materially rich and spiritually poor. Yes, again so many have much materially speaking, but even more so have placed their trust in the riches of this world to save them…so many have place more of their trust in politics to save our world than in God to save it and us.

And one could argue that we are living in time in which so many Catholics are woefully ignorant of the basic truths of our faith and so of the teachings of the Catholic Church.

The good news is that we too have been given not just two great saintly people to help us as in past, but many saintly people to help us in our current crisis…
such as two of the great intellectuals of all times; Blessed John Paul II and Pope Benedict, who like Dominic have taught us, with a clarity never seen before, the teachings and truths of our Catholic Faith and of the Gospels which are the same thing; These two have called us through their teachings to grow intellectually in the truths of our Beautiful Catholic faith.

And we have been given as well saintly figures such as Blessed Theresa of Calcutta and now Pope Francis who have called us and call us to spiritual poverty, not just a simplicity of life and a detachment from so many material possessions but to a poverty which places our trust in God to save us and our world and returns to making the adoration and worship of Him the one thing that matters most in our lives.

As I said last week during a homily here, St. Francis is many times misinterpreted as the saint who condemned the rich and called all poor people saints. I reminded those listening that St. Francis was the one who call on us to gild our altars with Gold and to use the finest linens available in the Sacred liturgy because by it we show the importance of the worship of God in our lives the primacy of adoration of God over service of the poor. And so we live the first Commandment in proper order..love of God first, love of others next but for love of Him.

So to it seems the same misinterpretation is being made with regards to Pope Francis. He is the Pope of the poor materially speaking who is calling the Church to be stripped of its riches especially with regards to the items it uses in Her liturgical celebrations and stripped of her teachings that go against the modern mentality. .

It seems, this is especially being done by the press who are trying to make Francis into a pope who is going against all of the teachings of the Church. I was recently given an article which purported to give ten quotes of Pope Francis which gave proof of this. Just one of the quotes was the following which proves he focuses on the poor more so than Benedict…who because he wore a golden and jewel encrusted cross compared to Francis’s simple wooden one wasn’t as humble or mindful of the poor…anyway the quote;
"Many people today lack hope. They are perplexed by the questions that present themselves ever more urgently in a confusing world, and they are often uncertain which way to turn for answers. They see poverty and injustice and they long to find solutions. "
"Yet if we refuse to share what we have with the hungry and the poor, we make of our possessions a false god. How many voices in our materialist society tell us that happiness is to be found by acquiring as many possessions and luxuries as we can! But this is to make possessions into a false god. Instead of bringing life, they bring death."

Interestly the article later pointed out that this quote (and the others in the article) wasn’t even made by Pope Francis but actually by Pope Benedict; hence the article actually disproved the assertion that Francis is poor minded and Benedict was the rich minded.

Again, all saintly people, if they are truly saintly, care for the poor materially speaking but all saintly people, saints, also point out that the greatest poverty in our world is ignorance of the truths of our faith which lead to salvation; and the poorest of the poor are then those who don’t know God loves them….and again, these can be very rich or they can be very poor materially speaking.

We must care for those who are materially speaking poor, yes…but even more so, if our world is going to change for the better we must do as both Dominic and Francis did as did Blessed John Paul II and Blessed Mother Theresa of Calcatta, as did Benedict and as is doing Pope Francis we must especially feed intellectually and spiritually those who are ignorant of the truths of our faith which are needed for salvation and we must instill in them the primary necessity of our divine service of the worship of God, if our service to the poor is going to bear the fruit of not just a longer life in this world but the fruit of eternal life in the world to come.

All of these saints and all other saints as well have one other thing in common, their love and devotion to the mother of God. They knew that by it we could convert and so save our world by leading souls away from love and trust in the “riches of this world,” to love and trust in the greatest of riches which is the Son of Mary, Jesus Christ, truly and physically present in the Holy Eucharist the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar.
It was the Mother of God herself who gave the powerful Eucharistic prayer of the Most Holy Rosary to St Dominic. “God has never,” said St. Dominic, “refused me what I asked;” and he has left us the Rosary, the we may learn, with Mary’s help, to pray easily and simply in the same holy trust.”

If we ask her, the Blessed Virgin will help us to place our hearts often next to the tabernacle, which is under the cross.

Homily for Luke 12:13-21 Eighteenth Sunday

Today the Holy Spirit wants to knock us out of our complacency, to wake us up, so to speak. In the words that He inspired, we hear that all things in this world are vanity. The wise man writing in our first reading, inspired by the Holy Spirit, is confronting the evils of this life- in particular suffering and death. And they makes no sense to him. He has long observed the undeniable truth that the good and the evil man will both face suffering and death-there is no escape for any of us. This is why in the end the writer can conclude that the pursuit of earthly things is vane. All is vanity.

Now what he is really trying to point out is that all the things of this earth, which take us away from an intimate relationship with God, are worthless, are so are vanity. After all, all the things in this world will have to be left behind including those people we love—so why do we strive to make this world our permanent dwelling especially when it can be such a vale of tears…in this life all must suffer both the good and the bad, all must die leaving behind everything. In this life all things are passing away except for love.

In this life then, we must strive for the higher things, the things of the Spirit of Love—seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Our earthly desires and passions will take us away from our heavenly calling if we seek to fill our desires and passions with created things instead of God. If we set our hearts on comfort and pleasure, not to mention sinful pleasure, they become the very obstacles which prevent us from reaching true happiness; in other words, they become obstacles to reaching God Who is our true happiness.

The truth is, our hearts are made for God alone and for His love. They are not made for things of this world, whether it be the riches of this world or the comfort and pleasures of this world. Only God can fulfill the deepest desires of the human heart. And so our hearts will never rest until they rest in God alone. Our hearts are made for Love alone…love is the only thing we can take with us when we leave this world.

And so, it is this wisdom of our first readings that Jesus in our Gospel today, uses in his advice to the man who approached him. The death of a father had just taken place and the two sons are arguing over, of all things, the inheritance-money, possessions. The reality of death confronts them, not only their father’s death but their own, (for whenever we face the death of a loved one, we also face the inevitability of our own death) and yet the one wants more of the inheritance than what he has received. And so, he appeals to Jesus to intervene on his behalf- after all it’s only fair…This is, of course, sadly, a familiar situation. How many families are torn apart by fighting over the inheritance after a funeral; and sometimes even before the body is cold?

Today, Jesus reads this man’s heart- and finds there, not only greed, but a great lack of love. In the face of his suffering, this man thinks that more material goods will fill the great void of love that is in his heart. And so Jesus responds to the request by telling him a parable. “Where is your treasure?” Jesus asks. “What is you heart set on?” In other words, is it set on the things of this world…or on the things of heaven?… Are you too worried and anxious about obtaining more possessions to be even concerned about your eternal salvation?…are you more worried about obtaining money, than obtaining the greatest of all treasures, Jesus Himself…He who is the source of all Love; He who is in fact, Love Itself?

And so today Jesus, out of love for us, wants to join the Holy Spirit in “waking us.” Jesus want us to seriously reflect that this life is so very short and the next life is so very long; in fact, eternally long. In light of this truth, “are our hearts then really set on obtaining heaven, on obtaining Jesus who is our heaven? “...Are we really taking our conversion and salvation seriously enough? “Is an intimate loving relationship with Jesus THE top priority in our lives?

Jesus, because of His infinite love for us, is reminding us, along with the rich man, of our mortality and warning us against greed and the reliance on riches. He tells us that death will come quickly and maybe even unexpectedly. Death comes for us all sooner or later (sometimes sooner), then judgment, then heaven or hell; a eternity immerse in eternal love or eternity separated from eternal love.

In light of these perennial truths, “are we ready for death; even if it comes today? And even more, Do we truly long to be with Jesus, or are we just plain afraid or even worse indifferent? Fear and indifference come from a lack of love for Jesus…Are our hearts filled with Love for Jesus?

Let me share with you a true story I heard in order to bring this all into sharp focus. A priest I know once gave a homily on this very Gospel. In the homily, He asked the congregation. What if today was your last Mass? The last homily you heard? The last Holy Communion you received? How would you attend this Mass, how would you pay attention and listen? Would you open your heart fully to God’s love? The priest ended by saying, “Are you taking your salvation seriously enough?”

The priest told me that his homily was made very unforgettable when the ushers came forward at this very same Mass to take up the collection. As one of the ushers genuflected before the altar he suffered a massive heart attack, and right then and there dropped dead on the spot…. For him, it was his last Mass, his last homily, and he didn’t even get a chance to receive Jesus into his soul one last time... I am sure that nobody in church that day ever forgot that Gospel and homily.

And so let us ask ourselves the same question the priest asked at the end of his homily, “Are we taking our salvation seriously enough?” Are we really willing to risk living an eternity separated from the Love of our heavenly Father by taken it all for granted, by assuming we’ve already made it or thinking there is plenty of time?.... At this point in our lives, are our hearts really full of Love for our God?

And so today, Jesus again speaks to us of the great necessity of prayer especially prayer before His True presence in the Holy Eucharist in order to set our hearts on fire for love of God. One’s life does not consist of possessions, but in obtaining and possessing God (the one thing that Matters).” Prayer is that action which sets our heart obtaining God instead of obtaining more things of this world.

And the secret to prayer is Eucharistic Prayer because it is prayer before the Heart of Jesus. As a result, prayer before the Holy Eucharist puts our hearts in touch with the heart of Heavenly Father so that our lives will never losing meaning and become vain. Eucharistic Prayer is the most efficacious way to increase the amount of love in our hearts because it prayer asking to obtain Jesus who is Divine Love; it is prayer to obtain Jesus Who is the Love of the Father offered and made present for each one of us out of love for us.

And so, we must center our lives on Jesus truly physically present on the Altar in the tabernacle in order to live good Christian lives, holy lives in order to be ready when ever death comes for us. The Eucharist is the one thing that matters, because it is God still on Earth out of love for us. Today Jesus is teaching us that we don’t give to heaven merely by being good, we get to heaven by loving God over and above all things. We get to heaven by being madly in love with God our Creator and radically living that love out in all aspects of our daily lives, especially by loving one another for love of God and the source of this love for us is the Holy Eucharist.

Let us turn to the Mother of the Holy Eucharist, the Blessed Virgin Mary, to help us never take our salvation for granted. May she help us stay close to her Son in the Eucharist so that we never become too attached to the things of this world but instead will become more and more attached to the Creator of the world. Then our lives will bear great fruit, the fruit of salvation for others and for ourselves. If we ask her, she will help us to place our hearts often next to the tabernacle, which is under the cross. (The cross shows us how much God loved us and the tabernacle show us how much God loves us now.)

Immaculate Heart of Mary help us to adore Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharists

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary time July 28, 2013 Ordinary and Extraordinary Form of the Liturgy

Last we spoke of the importance of prayer; especially contemplative prayer-sitting, like Mary, at the feet of Jesus, looking lovingly at His face and listening attentively to every word He speaks. Both the readings from the Extraordinary and Ordinary Form of the liturgy today continue with the importance of prayer. In the Ordinary from readings we see Abraham praying and interceding to God about the fate of Sodom. And in the Gospel, we read Jesus teaching the apostles how to pray…for we know not how to pray as we ought; and so He gives them the Our Father. In the Extraordinary Form St. Paul tells us that we need the Spirit in order to pray well and to please God in our prayer; and the Gospel from St. Luke tells us about the Pharisees in his prideful prayer and the sinful Publican in his humble prayer.

All these readings remind us that we must approach God as our Father, better yet as our daddy. We are to speak to Him humbly, as a child speaks to its daddy whom the child loves with his whole heart; we are to speak to Him with the simplicity of a child that trusts that the Father always hears him and will answer him in a way and time that is best for the child; and finally, speak to Him with the purity of a child that respects the father so much that the child would never do anything to intentionally to upset the father but only strive to please the father. …”

Purity and childlikeness helps us to make sure that we never say the “Our Father,” or any other prayer to God, without the realization that it is God the Almighty that we are speaking to. Intimacy and reverence must always go together in addressing our prayer to God. And so our prayer must be reverent and said from the heart to a All Holy Father who Loves us so much.

Because God love us so much, Jesus instructs us that our prayer to the Father should also be a trusting prayer, one that realizes that the Father already knows what we need even before we ask, and so will only give us the good things we need; however, not necessarily the things we want. Along with the Father giving us only the good things that we need, He will also give it in a way, and at a time which is best for us. He answers all prayers, but according to His Holy Will, not to our own.

This brings up another point Jesus that teaches about prayer; and that is, for God to listen to our prayer we must, must first be reconciled both with Him and with our neighbor. In other words, for our prayer to be effective, for it to bear fruit in our life, we must be in a right relationship with God by regularly receiving forgiveness for our sins in the Sacrament of Confession; always remembering however, we will only be forgiven to the extent we forgive others. In order to receive forgiveness, we must forgive others who have sinned against us.

We must also never approach God with the heart of the Pharisee but always with the humble heart of the publican…for, “O God a humble heart of Lord you will not despise”…so God be merciful to me a miserable sinner….and have mercy on all mankind for we are all sinners in equal need of God’s mercy. Any good in us is not of ourselves; nor is it given to us because of what we done…it is from the Mercy and goodness of God. For our prayer to be heard we must be humble, “for every one that exalted himself will be humbled and he that humble himself shall be exalted.”

We must humble ourselves. The problem is however, that we can’t humble ourselves for we are naturally prideful; we need God’s grace. And where do we get that…from prayer yes, but also from the Sacraments, in particular frequent confession but most importantly from the Most blessed of all Sacraments the Most Holy Eucharist…not just receiving the Holy Eucharist but coming before the Holy Eucharist as a child, on our knees, adoring the God-Man present there.

And so, it is interesting that in St. Luke chapter 18(which is the Gospel for the Extraordinary Form) if you read the next verses which immediately follow this weeks Gospel verses…you will hear that little children where brought to Jesus, even infants that He might touch them. But when the disciples saw this, they rebuked those who brought the children. But Jesus calling them together said: “Suffer children to come to me and forbid them not; for of such is the Kingdom of God.”

These verses certainly imply that we must be as little children to come before Jesus, for else where Jesus tells us that unless we become as little children we will not enter the Kingdom of God. And how best do come before Jesus? We do so by coming before Him in His true physical presence in the Holy Eucharist. But again, we must do so humbly, trustfully and pure.

Additionally these verses point two other important points. First, that we must help other “children come before Him by praying for all sinners, all of God’s children before His Eucharistic presences asking for the grace of God’s love and mercy to touch them as it has touched us; we must ask this for both those we love and for those who have trespassed against us. We must pray for the whole world.

And second we must bring the little ones, our children even our infants before His Eucharist presence. And to do so not only at Holy Mass, but also during times of Adoration outside of Mass. This is why I continue to push children’s adoration. We must suffer to bring the children before the Eucharist King…and not prevent them in any way….the world can be saved by little children being taught to adore their God truly present in His resurrected and glorified body in the little white Host. We need a Eucharist Crusade of Children. This also implies being open to life so that more children can come into the world in order to adore their God in the Holy Eucharist in order that they can adore him by the way they live their lives.

This brings up an additional point. We can’t live lives of righteousness without the grace that comes from the Eucharist. If we are going to be counted among the ten righteous needed to spare our modern age from God’s promised chastisements then we must spend more time humbly, trustfully and with purity in adoration of the Holy Eucharist begging God’s pardon and mercy on us and on our sinful world. This grace and mercy can transform us into other Christ so that everything we do, everything no matter how small becomes a prayer, a sacrifice, and act of penance, in order to merit grace for the conversion and salvation of souls.

Next week, August 4th, we celebrate the feast day of St. John Vinney, the patron saint of parish priest; St. John Vianney discovered the secret of moving and opening the Father’s heart to our humble prayer. That secret was humble, faithful, persistent and reverential prayer in front of the Blessed Sacrament. St Vianney spent hours on his knees before Jesus in the Eucharist, praying for the conversion of His parishioners and for the whole world.

Thankfully there are many people throughout the world today, both religious and lay faithfully alike, who like St John Vianney, make weekly, even daily Holy Hours before the Blessed Sacrament. "Thank God, there are those who pray each and every day with the faith of Abraham from the heart. It could be their persevering prayer before for the tabernacle that as so far saved our sinful world from God's divine justice. They are the modern day Abraham's dialoging with God, imploring his mercy and forgiveness for the sins of the modern cities of our world.

But are there enough praying before the Eucharist? Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed--there just weren't enough people--ten--reaching out to God. (If we compare the population of Sodom and Gomorrah with the United States, in ratio, we would need 300,000 righteous people). And so, will you also be one of them that will on your knees before the Blessed Sacrament, reach out to the Father through the Son on behalf of others, so that our world may be converted and so souls be saved? Speak to the Father today from your heart. Beg his mercy for our fallen Cities and country while the Father is still preserving in his mercy, beg His mercy for yourself and others. Persistence prayer to Our Father God will begin to end the persistent sin and un-forgiveness in our world and in our own life.

Let us at this Mass and every Mass, as we offer ourselves along with Jesus in loving sacrifice to the Father, ask our Blessed Mother to help us make this offering fully and completely, better yet let us make this offering through her Immaculate Heart so that she herself can place it in the Sacred Heart of her Son…Surely He will accept it from her hands!

Let us ask her to obtain for us the grace to live this offering so that every thing we do in our daily lives can become a sacrifice, an act of penance, for love of God and for love of neighbor. This is what the angel of Fatima meant when he cried out Penance! Penance! Penance! O most holy Trinity, Father Son and Holy Spirit I adore you profoundly. I offer to Thee the most precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, truly present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the sins, sacrileges and indifference for which He is truly offended. And through the intercession of the most Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary I beg of thee the conversion of poor sinners. Amen.

Let us ask the Blessed Virgin Mary to help us sit silently at the feet of Jesus and listen to His words in loving rapture.

July 21st, 2013 Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time.

In today’s Holy Gospel we are giving an incredible invitation by the Holy Spirit, who is speaking to each of us through the Evangelist St. Luke. Today you and I are invited to come and sit literally at the feet of Jesus and listen to His words. It’s an invitation to come into His Mysterious but True Presence, in order to experience for our selves His infinite Love and Mercy; allowing the power of this Love and Mercy into our daily lives and into our relationships with one another, sharing the Love of God alive in us with the whole world.

Today, we see Jesus at the home of Lazarus, where his two sisters are doing apparently very different actions. It would seem a very familiar scene in any household especially at the holidays- one person is stuck doing all of the work, while others sit and visit and do nothing to help. In our account, Martha for her part does what is customary; she is so absorbed in making sure everything is perfect- actively attending to so many details- is there enough bread? Have we prepared enough meat? (On and on).

Mary, on the other hand, it would seem, sits passively in silence doing nothing at the master’s feet. Mary is not helping Martha with all the chores. Now, out of justice, we might think that Jesus should say to her- “Mary please help your sister-Martha, she is anxious and worried about so many things;” but he does not. Jesus instead turns to her sister and says, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about so many things and yet few are needed, indeed only one. It is Mary who has chosen the better part; it is not to be taken from her.”

After we recover from our natural shock from Jesus apparent failure to act in justice, we have to consider what all of this means. For the Fathers of the Church this passage has been seen as showing the two essential aspects of Christian life-prayer and service; Mary representing prayer; and Martha-service to others. Now often, these two aspects are seen in opposition to one another; however, nothing can be further from the case; they are intricately bound.

Every Christian, even the most recluse hermit, even the pope, must live these two aspects of the Christian life- prayer and service; both are needed to authentically follow the Master. Now most of us understand the need for service. But the prayer dimension, and in particular the silent contemplative prayer type, is often put in second place or even omitted in our world today. For many, prayer, especially silent contemplative prayer is seen as being merely passive-doing nothing, accomplishing nothing. But the fact is, we can only live lives of faithful service to our brothers and sisters when we first come to Jesus in prayer, listen and seek a loving Union with the Creator. Contemplative prayer then is primary; it is the best part. We must first come before we go, we must first be filled with God’s love before we can share that love with others.

Why is that prayer, and again especially contemplative prayer, which could be defined as sitting silently at the feet of Jesus in order to listen to His words, why is prayer so undervalued in our world today and dare I say in our Church today? Why has it become secondary to so call active service, or even omitted. I believe one of the main reasons prayer is undervalued or left out of the Christian life is time. We all have such packed calendars. Modern technology may make the organization of our packed calendars easier, but all we have accomplished is to just put more things into our day. We become absorbed by the clock. We have a clock on our wrist, on our cell phone, Blackberry, or IPhone. Clocks are everywhere to remind us that time is short, so we must get busy, busy, busy. As we sit in the traffic jams, we are scheduling and checking email, multitasking, frustrated because we are late to a meeting-(the person in the other vehicle can be seen not as a human being but merely as an obstacle getting in our way). We have to finish everything in order to pick up the children from school and get them to soccer practice and then on to their music lesson. Somewhere in there, we’ll try to grab some fast food and chow it down as we drive. We have been trained to think that we only have a good day when we accomplish a great deal. I think this is a pretty accurate description of our hectic life these days.

We have the temptation as well, to bring this busyness into our spiritual life. We are rushed for time, so when we look at where time will be spent in the presence of our God in intimate prayer, we say to ourselves, “I Only have a couple of minutes to pray today- I’ll try to get some more time later, but today, I need to accomplish something.” The ‘more time later’ however, never seems to come, and eventually we become too busy for even a couple of minutes, prayer can be omitted altogether. And if we do find time for prayer, our minds can be filled with so many anxious concerns that our prayer life too, becomes just a matter of getting things done instead of a matter of intimate love with the divine Lover-Jesus—we can end up saying many things but never really sit at the feet of Jesus and listen to His words; we do all the talking.

And so what are we to do? The fact is we can never really be too busy for prayer, never too busy to sit at the feet of Jesus and look at His face, never to busy to sit silently as well in order to hear his voice. So first, our minds have to undergo a conversion about time. Love never counts time when together, only when apart, for those in love can’t wait to be together again and when they are together they never want time to end.

Time spend with Jesus is not wasted time. Time with our Lord is the most loving and indeed most effective and active way of living the Christian life; it is far from sitting before Jesus doing nothing—being with our beloved is never doing nothing. It is a matter of being, not doing; to sit in the presence of the one we love and attempting to united ourselves with them in love; yes, speaking to them but at times saying nothing just staring into their eyes. This, THIS is the most active activity—contemplative activity.

Second, we must make changes in our calendar. Personal prayer should be a scheduled event in our day, we should add it to our smart phone’s calendars. Our day should start firstly with prayer on our knees, even before we get dress and then we should end our day with a prayer. In between, we need to schedule time for prayer, perhaps a rosary walk, stopping into the church a few minutes, even attending daily Mass. We need to be still too whenever we can and know that He is God and listen to Him.

We also need to practice the awareness that God is with us all day long even as we work, play and relax; we should pause before each new activity of the day and place ourselves in the presence of God, that is realize that God is presence with us as we fulfill faithfully our daily tasks offering them to Him in love through the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Our ordinary daily tasks then become a prayer in of themselves, they then bear great spiritual fruit in our lives and in our world—they become a way to the Lord for us and for others, instead of getting in the way.

Next, speaking of the Holy Mass, we need to make Holy Mass the most important event of our lives, revolving our lives around it, not the Mass around our lives. In other words we need to put the Mass always first. To help us we should consider putting in extra time for Mass on Sunday- arrive early in order to properly prepare for Mass and spend a few minutes afterwards in Thanksgiving to God for being giving the awesome privilege and blessing to even have been able to be present at Mass, not to even mention receiving God Himself into our body and soul.

At Holy Mass we also must be careful not to be too much of a Martha, having to “do” something. The highest form of activity at Mass again is not doing something or even saying something, but in being… sitting at the feet of Jesus and silently allowing ourselves to bask in the rays of His love for us. We accept the offering of His love and then we try with the Virgin Mary’s help to offer our love in return. Holy Mass should be about the action between two hearts who are growing in love with one another-who seek union with one another; our heart and Jesus’ heart; cor ad cor loquitur--heart speaks silently to heart. We should look into His eyes by staring at the Eucharist and know that He too is looking into our eyes with unfathomable love.

By our loving unrushed presence at Mass we are like Martha and Mary welcoming into our home-Jesus, who is truly on the altar and in the Tabernacle. (To help us realize the infinite value of the Mass and the Eucharist, we could also come before the tabernacle outside of Holy Mass to sit at the feet of Jesus, to experience His loving Gaze and be filled with His Love and Mercy and in the silence hear His voice in our hearts. In doing this, we are choosing the better part.

The more you and I make time for Jesus by intimate prayer in our daily lives, the more we make time for Jesus by coming into His true physical presence in the Holy Eucharist at Holy Mass and whenever we can, at least one hour a week outside of Holy Mass, the more we are able to experience his tangible presence in our lives and in our everyday relationships, the more we experience his Divine love acting in our world. By being in His presence we experience the power of His Divine Love and receive the bliss that it promises and then the more we become transformed and empowered to in service share more fully that bliss with those in the world around us. Contemplative prayer must always be primary in our life. Jesus will reward the generosity of our time spend with Him in love, just has he rewarded Martha and Mary’s time with Him, by later raising their brother Lazarus from the dead. Jesus can never be outdone in generosity.

As we finish this time of prayer, let us ask the Blessed Virgin to grant us the diligence of Martha as well as the awareness of the true presence of God of Mary. Let us daily as individuals and families pray her Holy Rosary. The Rosary is a Eucharistic Prayer. In it we ask the Blessed Mother to help us in our busy and hectic lives make time to pray and to sit silently at the feet of Her Son in contemplative prayer. The Rosary is a prayer to lead us to the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus in order to allow the Power of Its Love to be active in our daily lives and in our World; This is the greatest service we can perform. Our Lady of the Rosary, Our Lady of Fatima, Pray for us. Amen.

Preparing for the Journey of Lent 2013

By Archbishop Charles J. Chaput

PHILADELPHIA, February 12, 2013 (Zenit.org) - More than 70 years ago the great French Catholic writer Georges Bernanos published a little essay called “Sermon of an Agnostic on the Feast of St. Théresè.” Bernanos deeply loved the Church, but he could also be brutally candid when it came to himself and his fellow believers. Above all, he had a piercing sense of irony about the comfortable, the self-satisfied and the lukewarm who postured themselves as Catholic – whether they were laypeople or clergy.

In his essay he imagined “what any decent agnostic of average intelligence might say, if by some impossible chance the [pastor] were to let him stand awhile in the pulpit [on] the day consecrated to St. Théresè of Lisieux.”

“Dear brothers,” says the agnostic from the pulpit, “many unbelievers are not as hardened as you imagine. … [But when] we seek [Christ] now, in this world, it is you we find, and only you. … It is you Christians who participate in divinity, as your liturgy proclaims; it is you ‘divine men’ who ever since [Christ’s] ascension have been his representatives on earth. … You are the salt of the earth. [So if] the world loses its flavor, who is it I should blame? … The New Testament is eternally young. It is you who are so old. … Because you do not live your faith, your faith has ceased to be a living thing.”

Bernanos had little use for the learned, the proud or the superficially religious. He believed instead in the little flowers – the Thérèses of Lisieux – that sustain the Church and convert the world by the purity, simplicity, innocence and zeal of their faith. That kind of innocent faith is a gift. It’s a gift each of us can ask for, and each of us will receive, if we just have the courage to choose it and then act on it. The only people who ever really change the world are saints. Each of us can be one of them. But we need to want sainthood, and then we need to follow the path that comes with it.

Bernanos once wrote that the optimism of the modern world, including its “politics of hope,” is like whistling past a graveyard. It’s a cheap substitute for real hope and “a sly form of selfishness, a method of isolating [ourselves] from the unhappiness of others” by thinking happy or seemingly progressive thoughts. Real hope “must be won. [We] can only attain hope through truth, at the cost of great effort and long patience. … Hope is a virtue, virtus, strength; an heroic determination of the soul. [And] the highest form of hope is despair overcome.”

We can only attain hope through truth. And what that means is this: From the moment Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life,” the most important public statement anyone can make is “Jesus Christ is Lord.”

This year, Ash Wednesday falls on February 13. It marks the beginning of Lent. For Catholics, this is a time to be honest; to take an unblinking look at the truth of our lives. Every year God offers us this great season of humility as a chance to remember who we are as believers, reflect soberly on our actions and refocus ourselves on the source of our hope, the only real hope of a bloody and despairing world: Jesus Christ. We do this through prayer, silence, the sacrament of penance, seeking out and reconciling with those whom we’ve hurt, forgiving those who’ve hurt us, generosity to the poor, and fasting, not just from food, but from all those many things that distract us from the God who made and loves us.

If we call ourselves Christians, then let’s live like we mean it – beginning today, with this Lenten season; so that people who look upon us will see the presence of Jesus Christ instead

Love (Charity) without Justice is not Love; and Justice without Love (Charity)is not Justice!

The New Evangelizetioin which includes the end to abortion must begin with an increase of justice within the Church Herself.

As you know we celebrated a very sad anniversary last week, the anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade decision of the Supreme Court legalizing the modern day slaughter of the innocents.

Estimates are that that decision has resulted in more than 50  million children who have not been allowed to live since 1973.

In his column last week our Bishop, Bishop Malloy presented A few calculations to give us some interesting comparisons with regards to how many children have been murdered since Roe vs. Wade. To put it in perspective, the population of the state of Illinois is said to be about 12.8  million people.

Can we imagine that abortion has taken from us the lives of the population of the state of Illinois, nearly four times over?

The population of California is currently about 37.6  million people. So Illinois and California would both be completely depopulated.

The state of New York has 19  million people. The number of abortions since Roe v. Wade is about two and one half times the population of the whole state of New York.
The population of Spain is 46   million people. The population of England is about 53 million people.

You get my drift. Because of abortion, it is as though whole countries and states simply do not exist.

Bishop Malloy went on to say, “There is another consequence that we need to keep in mind as we ponder our modern slaughter of the innocents. It is the often unspoken pain and regret of the women who have had abortions.”

Last Week, I also read a very interesting pastoral letter by the Bishop of Denver, Samuel Aquila marking the sad anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. In his letter, Bishop Aquila admits that he didn’t practice the faith in his first three years in college. During that time, he worked as hospital orderly assisting in the emergency room at a student health center and a hospital. It was here that he encountered the gruesome reality of abortion.

“At that time, he said, some states had approved abortion laws that I wasn’t even aware of. Because of those laws, when I was in college I witnessed the results of two abortions,” he writes.

“The first was in a surgical unit. I walked into an outer room and in the sink, unattended, was the body of small-unborn child who had been aborted. I remember being stunned. I remember thinking that I had to baptize that child.”

The second abortion experience was even more shocking.

“A young woman came into the emergency room screaming. She explained that she had had an abortion already. When the doctor sent her home, he told her she would pass the remains naturally. She was bleeding as the doctor, her boyfriend, the nurse and I placed her on a table. I held a basin as the doctor retrieved a tiny arm, a tiny leg and then the rest of the broken body of a tiny unborn child. I was shocked. I was saddened for the mother and child, for the doctor and the nurse. None of us would have participated in such a thing were it not an emergency. I witnessed a tiny human being destroyed by violence.”

He said, not surprisingly, that the memory haunts him to this day.
“I will never forget that I stood witness to acts of unspeakable brutality. In the abortions I witnessed, powerful people made decisions that ended the lives of small, powerless, children. Through lies and manipulation, children were seen as objects. Women and families were convinced that ending a life would be painless, and forgettable. Experts made seemingly convincing arguments that the unborn were not people at all, that they could not feel pain, and were better off dead.”

The experience left the bishop a changed man. “I witnessed the death of two small people who never had the chance to take a breath. I can never forget that. And I have never been the same. My faith was weak at the time. But I knew by reason, and by what I saw, that a human life was destroyed. My conscience awakened to the truth of the dignity of the human being from the moment of conception. I became pro-life and eventually returned to my faith.”

What has happened in the last 40 years of sanctioned killing of the unborn is that we, as a people, have become coarsened. “We’ve learned to see people as problems and objects,” the bishop writes. “In the four decades since Roe vs. Wade, our nation has found new ways to weaken the family, to marginalize the poor, the homeless, the mentally ill—we’ve found new ways to exploit and abuse. Today we must recognize that 40 years of sanctioned killing has given the culture of death a firm footing and foundation in our nation.”

Catholics must become holier to loosen the grip of the culture of death.

“Protecting life is our obvious duty as Catholics, and ending legal protection for abortion is imperative. 40 years have passed and still we have not found a successful strategy to end the legally protected killing of the unborn. But we have also failed to win public opinion. Polling today suggests that 63% of Americans support legal protection for abortion. The bishop said this is where change must begin.

Here with all do respect to bishop Aquila I disagree with him in this sense. Where change must begin is within the Church herself; change must begin with both laity and clergy alike; change must begin in our parishes and yes, in our dioceses.

I heard that it was over 53% of the Catholics in this last election that supported one of the most radical left wing pro death politicians ever. And far too many even priests and bishops either support pro-choice or are conspicuously quiet with regards to the defense of the dignity of the human person.

Bishop Aquila writes. “If we want to build a culture of life, we need to begin with charity. Social charity, or solidarity, is the hallmark of a culture of life and a civilization of love. . . . This charity must begin in the family,” But I would humbly add this charity must also begin in the parish family and in the diocesan and Church structures at large. Our Church is so divided. There is so little trust, sadly especially among priests and even trust between priests and bishops and between bishops and bishops. Remember our Lady of Akita Japan, echoing the message of LaSalette and Fatima, said the time would come when Cardinal would oppose Cardinal, bishop oppose bishop; and this includes priest against priest. This must stop; we must repent; we must respect the human dignity one another, but we must do so with regards to the truth, the truth that comes from God. This the basis of the New Evangelization.

The reversal of our culture of death both within the Society and within the Church is then, intricately, intricately tied into the New Evangelization that our Holy Fathers Blessed Pope John Paul and Benedict are so ardently calling for. But again the New Evangelization begins within the Church.

This is also why what I about to say at first doesn’t seem to be part of the pro-life moment; But it is, because it is tied to the new Evangelization. Let me use recent address by Cardinal Archbishop Burke to the bishops of Kenya to make my point. The Cardinal indicated in His address that the New Evangelization (and so the dignity of man defended properly) will never be realized until we work more diligently for justice with-in the Church herself.

The cardinal pointed out that in so many chanceries of the world, while canon law is being quoted, often it is not being followed especially with regards to the rights of priests, but also with the rights of the laity as well. He said the following of Canon law is not only a matter of justice it is a matter of pastoral concern for the faithful and is matter of promoting unity within the Church herself, including unity in our parishes. It is also a matter of respecting the rights and the dignity of the catholic faithful; again, priest and laity alike.

“Like our families, which are the first place where those who are marginalized, and whose dignity is forgotten, can be supported,to build a culture of life we must commit to strengthening our own families, and to supporting the families of our community.” Said Bishop Aquila. But again, this must begin within the Church; within our dioceses, our chanceries and with in our parishes.

We must accept the full truth of the Gospel but this truth must be lived out in Charity. Charity must support works of mercy, apostolates of social justice and support. Charity also includes solidarity and loyalty with one another. In the Christian community, in parish and in diocese we Christians have to bond together, to care more for each other, to support each other more and to quit turning on one another.

Back to bishop Aquila. He said and rightly so, “A true culture of life is infectious. The joy which comes from living in gratitude for the gift of life—and treating all life as gift—effects change. When Christians begin to live with real regard for human dignity, our nation will awaken to the tragedy of abortion, and she will begin to change.”

Finally, he encourages all to remember and rely upon the power of prayer.
“Our prayer and sacrifice for an end to abortion, united with Christ on the cross, through Mary, will transform hearts and renew minds. In prayer we entrust our nation to Jesus Christ truly present in the Holy Eucharist the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar. In doing so, we can be assured of his victory.”

I want to end with a wonderful quote from Blessed John Paul II which sums up today’s message. “If you want peace work for justice; if you want justice defend life; if you want life accept the truth the truth which comes from God!”