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Get into the ring! How this works...

This is easy! Each week on Thursday I post my homily idea...my main focus for preaching this coming Sunday. What I am hoping for is a reaction from people in the pews. Does my "focus" connect with your daily life, faith, and experience? Or not? Either affirm the direction I am going in (by giving me an example from your life) or challenge me, ask for clarification! Questions are the best! Reaction rather than reflection is what I'm looking for here. Don't be afraid, get in the ring. Ole!



Friday, October 5, 2012

Oct 7 Homily Prep

-Last Sunday's homily is available by email
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at USCCB.org >>>>
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 5:30 Saturday

Are You Disappointed in Love? Of Course!

The troubling and heartbreaking mystery buried in the text of this Sunday's respect life scriptures is that God has planted deep within us an unquenchable thirst for communion. In our broken human condition, there is no quenching that thirst. We are called to "settle".

The problem in the blindness of our broken human condition is that we have never accepted the inability of human fulfillment of love on this side of heaven. Therefore we romantically seek and don't find satisfaction in the relationships of this world. Whether it is in marriage, in the family, in the church! We go seeking that which is not promised to us. Only God can fulfill the hunger he has placed with us for communion.

Too many of us in the world spend our entire lives disappointed in the lack of fulfillment in love. We never accept in faith the limitation of our human condition and the fulfillment of our desires in God alone.

This is a tremendous waste of time, effort, and energy. Let us take a new look at the hunger of our hearts and accept the limited satisfaction that our human loving can accomplish and turn our desire to God alone.

Make sense? We don't have to be happy about it!

Monday, October 1, 2012

Someone Asked for this Quote

In the homily on Faithful Citizenship September 30th I read....

"Yes, America, all this belongs to you. But your greatest beauty and your richest blessing is found in the human person: in each man, woman and child, in every immigrant, in every native-born son and daughter.
For this reason, America, your deepest identity and truest character as a nation is revealed in the position you take towards the human person. The ultimate test of your greatness in the way you treat every human being, but especially the weakest and most defenseless ones.
The best traditions of your land presume respect for those who cannot defend themselves. If you want equal justice for all, and true freedom and lasting peace, then, America, defend life! All the great causes that are yours today will have meaning only to the extent that you guarantee the right to life and protect the human person:
– feeding the poor and welcoming refugees;
– reinforcing the social fabric of this nation;
– promoting the true advancement of women;
– securing the rights of minorities;
– pursuing disarmament, while guaranteeing legitimate defence; all this will succeed only if respect for life and its protection by the law is granted to every human being from conception until natural death.
Every human person – no matter how vulnerable or helpless, no matter how young or how old, no matter how healthy, handicapped or sick, no matter how useful or productive for society – is a being of inestimable worth created in the image and likeness of God.
This is the dignity of America, the reason she exists, the condition for her survival – yes, the ultimate test of her greatness: to respect every human person, especially the weakest and most defenceless ones, those as yet unborn.
With these sentiments of love and hope for America, I now say goodbye in words that I spoke once before: "Today, therefore, my final prayer is this: that God will bless America, so that she may increasingly become - and truly be - and long remain one Nation, under God, indivisible. With liberty and justice for all."
May God bless you all.
God bless America!”

–Blessed Pope John Paul II
Farewell Ceremony from the United States
Detroit Metro Airport
19 September 1987