God does not abandon us…..

I just happened upon a television evangelist (actually he is a pastor of a local Baptist church) who gave a detailed sermon describing how St. Paul states in his letter to the Romans that God abandons those who are living lives of sin. He stated unequivocally that when we sin God abandons us to that lifestyle.

I can’t help but think about this in the context of our own culture. St. Paul describes such a culture engulfed in its passions with a detailed list of symptoms in chapter 1. And I do NOT entirely disagree with his assessment of our own times but I do differ in my interpretation of Romans 1.

God does not abandon us. He created us in His image. He pours his grace and mercy (Romans 5:26) all the more on me as I live my life which at times has sin in it. But He never abandons us. He never forces himself on us. He never says I have had enough of you! Why am I confident in this interpretation? Because Jesus revealed something different about our merciful Father.

And St. Paul can testify personally about the significance of Christ’s mercy. He speaks to God’s mercy that goes beyond the “letter of the law” for he desires mercy and compassion, not judgment and condemnation. Our job is to witness God’s love in our life by not doing God’s job: If ever Romans 1 can testify to is this truth: we sin and we bring about God’s judgment as a result of our actions. God will allow us to “wallow” in our sin. He will never force us to accept his mercy if we don’t want it. It is a free gift that comes from His mercy-seat. When we accept this free gift we change our hearts. We try to love as he loves us.

God will never abandon me. He wants my hearts and since he initiates relationship with us (not the other way around) he will always pour his grace on me to change. There is not one lost soul that God hasn’t sought after long in the distance.

Lord, help me love myself more

If ever there is a time in our history it appears to be now that this word of love needs to be resounding from the rooftops!

Lord help me to be a channel of your peace, where there is injury your love….

Jesus taught us how to love: as He did us! Teach me how to love more like you Lord.

Teach me to love my wife with the selfless love that will speak to her heart.

Help me to love all those people who God sends my way with a love so unselfish one might see and say, “See how he loved!”

St. Augustine: A Man Like Us

• While reflecting on a short excerpt of St. Augustine’s Confessions contained in our Morning Office I could not help but think that this great doctor of the Church is not unlike you or me.
• The beauty of “Late Have I Loved Thee” resonates in my own heart. I like many believers since him have sought the presence of the Lord outside myself. In the beauty of creation. In the beauty of everything that God has created because after all, wasn’t it all GOOD!
• Yet I was never fully satisfied. I always seemed to lack something. I couldn’t put my finger on it. I just knew intuitively that I yearrned for more. Why couldn’t these things fill my heart? Why couldn’t I feel love?
• St. Augustine points out that it was God within me who allowed me the privilege of this journey. Only after I traveled this road would I too cry out that it wasn’t until I found him in me that I realized He had been with me the entire trip!
• St. Augustine is a man like us. May his desire for us to find God be blessed with faith, hope, and love.

Love one another….

Today’s Gospel from Matthew reminds us that we first must learn to love God. Our homilist pointed out an important fact: To love God is to love Godly things and to put away ungodly things. This is the first step to loving as God does!
May the God who loves us beyond our understanding pour his grace on me to love more as He does by placing those things that distract me aside so I may love Him more….

After a short intermission….

I’m back (add an Arnie S. accent to what i said!)…

 

More to come, I promise!

A week of holy opportunities…..

Praise be the name of Jesus and holy is his name!

During the holy week liturgical celebrations we are offered the opportunity to “fine-tune” our walk with the Lord and then to call to mind the example Jesus set before us as a model of holiness for which we ALL are called to emulate.

God came to us as a human being: A man! Since God acts not for his own good but for ours we must use his gift of faith to see his divine plan for our “human” life.

Holy Thursday begins this plan by giving us an example of service and sacrifice! One can not serve God and his people without the sacrifices necessary to accomplish such a lofty goal. Jesus reminds us in John’s version of the Last Supper that he came not to be a “T.O” (you know, the Me, Myself, and I ideology which is concerned only about those 3 people alone: sorry T.O I thought you had gotten better at this!) for God but to serve God first and foremost with every fiber of his being (Human AND Divine!).

This service is marked by self-sacrifice: God gets on his hands and knees and serves those he chose for apostolic ministry and washes their feet! God did that! If we don’t then, we are really fooling ourselves!

Holiness is a spiritual virtue of understanding that says the setting aside one’s own desires for another person (priest for Christ’s bride the Church; Husband for wife; Wife for husband; Parents for children; Children for parents; people of God for their neighbor…..). To be set aside for another purpose other than our own is holiness (we can look at sin another time….): a purpose for which we all have been created in the image of God in order to accomplish!

Wow! Don’t we have a great God?! Doesn’t God have great confidence in each of us?! Why can’t we trust him with this fulfilling plan for our life?

Let us pray for the grace this day, to offer our lives to God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! Let us grasp onto this opportunity to lift our life in holiness!  

Read  Peter’s first letter chapter 2 
. 

May we become ”a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own, so that you may announce the praises” of God this holy week by the holiness for which we live following Christ!

Getting stoned…..

In today’s mass the gospel of St. John (10:31-42) records the dialogue between Jesus and those who want to kill him. As a matter of fact they pick up stones and are taking aim….

This struck me quite profoundly! And I began to remember the times I loaded up the stones of my unbelief, ready to take aim at the way Jesus has taught us through the Church how to follow him.

I know when I was younger my stones were marked with unbelief that the Church has a purpose designed by God (St.. Paul speaks of this truth and uses the term church 66 times in his letters!).

I can recall the stones at another time were marked with my unbelief in the sacrament of marriage as a sign of Christ’s mysterious love for his Church (Eph 5:21-32).

At other times my stones were loaded for bear because of my unbelief in the Church’s teaching about love, sex, and marriage (a theme that runs throughout the Holy Bible).

Quite often my stones were loaded and aimed at our Lord because I did not believe the sacraments were of any use or had any power, much less be a living encounter with the person of Christ. I could continue my litany of unbelief (much to my own chagrin) and it would become redundant very quickly! 

Interesting enough I must admit that my stones of unbelief were always centered on what “I” believed. Hmmm…. 

Yet I submit that we must all admit we have loaded up our ammunition of stones of unbelief and have taken aim at the Lord who loves us: Jesus! We want to blame everyone else as to why we can’t believe. We don’t want to think of ourselves as responsible for our lack of belief.

When are we going to cry out “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief!” That’s the reply of a believer. That’s the reply of a friend of Jesus. That’s the humble reply of someone who really want’s God to teach us the truth.

Are you getting ready to throw your stones of unbelief at Jesus?

Passion of the Christ: Thoughts from a sinner…..

One can not watch the Passion of the Christ without experiencing the pain inflicted upon our Savior in this movie. I also acknowledge that many folks struggle to watch it due to the graphic portrayal of the “scourging” scene. BUT, if one can get past that (and I suggest one HAS to get past it to really appreciate this movie) God will really speak to you as he did me during this scene.

First, I can not ignore the fact that our life when lived according to Jesus’ teachings without mortal sin on our conscience and fighting our venial sins can be compared to being white as snow (Psalm 51 comes to mind). When living a life of grace we are without blemish and our consciences are free! But as sin enters the picture suddenly the purity begins to receive lash marks which mars the soul. If I continue to allow sin to reign the lashes of the sins completely distort the soul where it becomes unrecognizable. So it is very difficult to not recognize the destruction that sin does to our soul if we continue to live without reconciling them. Praise God we have recourse to the sacraments of Reconciliation and Eucharist! These very necessary tools restore the lost purity and help us to try harder not to sin in the future.

Secondly, I really personalized that scene much to my own chagrin. And it wasn’t to feel guilt or to beat myself up about my weaknesses, but to acknowledge the fact that every time I sin I inflict a lash upon the purity of my soul just as Christ took the lashing of our sins for our salvation! What a God we have…. What a loving Savior our Lord really is And man does he love me!  can hardly wrap my brain around this truth: Jesus loves me more than I will ever know.

Heavenly Father, look upon my weak efforts to follow you and pour your healing balm of love on all the wounds that I have inflicted on my soul. Allow me the grace sufficient for me to grow from my failures and to help those who struggle in following you. May my efforts to serve always bring about your glory! Amen.

Reconciliation: A Way of Life

Last evening I was blessed with the opportunity to give a talk to parents of children who will celebrate their First Reconciliation (layman’s terms: confession!) about the sacrament and how, when properly applied to our daily living, can be a way of life that will draw the family closer to God and one another.

I read in an article in the Florida Catholic several moons ago an intriguing article about forgiveness. It stated that our culture accepted capitol punishment because of its lack of mercy within the core cell of society: the family.

Hmm…. Now I can get a little carried away at times and paint with a broad brush colors of judgment on the canvas of evangelization and my first reaction was “Don’t jump to conclusions!” It is a far reach to state that since there is little forgiveness within the family’s jurisdiction that it would overflow to other areas of its life?

Well, I began to look at my own experience. I revisited the years of days gone past of my childhood. I remembered vividly my parents and their very volatile relationship. I examined, through the process of my own memory, how they interacted with each other and also how discipline was distributed when we (my 5 brothers and I) circumvented the “rules of the home.” I was not surprised to realize that we surely had moments where we did not meet Christ’s standards of mercy and love.

As a result of this upbringing (and I harbor NO ill will towards my parents – they did the best they could and inevitably they divorced) my adult life has mirrored many of the behaviors that I saw as an impressionable young boy; an insolent teen; and finally a man who knew little about love and mercy.

I was also struck by the fact that as a result of my hardened heart I had put before me so many barriers of protection that to this very day I am still uncomfortable with social settings (which is not a positive attribute to have in my line of work!).

Jesus taught us the prime example of how we are to forgive: Luke Chapter 15! As a response to the scribes and Pharisees charge that Jesus would dare to eat with sinners he gave us 3 parables that help to describe God’s heart. He showed the learned of Judaism that God’s heart is so full of mercy, love, and compassion that we human beings can’t wrap our little brains around how loving a Father we have in heaven!

God constantly seeks our reconciliation with him. He looks at the horizon of our sinfulness and gets just a glimpse our our return and He bolts towards us on the path of mercy and love! He embraces us, as mother’s do their newborns, and whispers in our ears that he loves us so much that he wants to throw a party to celebrate our reconciliation! He even goes takes this above and beyond the call of duty and dispels any thoughts and doubts that we have about his heart: His heart is about love!

Brothers and sisters, let us fall upon God’s throne of mercy. Do not be afraid (remember in scripture every time this phrase is used God is about to do something extraordinary in the life of the believer!)! Come home. Bring all your troubles to him. Share your inner most thoughts and feelings with him.

He’s looking for you right now!

Giving Glory to God!

Blessings to all!

“Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church, of which I am a minister in accordance with God’s stewardship given to me to bring to completion for you the word of God, the mystery hidden from ages and from generations past. But now it has been manifested to his holy ones, to whom God chose to make known the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; it is Christ in you, the hope for glory. It is he whom we proclaim, admonishing everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone perfect in Christ. For this I labor and struggle, in accord with the exercise of his power working within me.”

This passage from St. Paul’s letter to the Colossians (1:24-27) has renewed my mind about my ministry of service. Yesterday Fr. Ben and I visited Gulf Correctional Institute where we celebrated mass with the Catholic residents of these two facilities (main complex and annex). The inmates were blessed to be able to participate and we were blessed to proclaim “liberty to the captives!”

God is indeed alive and wanting to continue His work through all of his children. He doesn’t look for the qualified: God qualifies those He has called! I am completely amazed that he can work through the likes of me and I give Him the glory for everything he accomplishes as a result of my fiat!

I pray that God will inspire you to be there for him where ever he has you and that whatever you do brings glory and honor to Him!