Veritas Vos Liberabit

Woman, why are you weeping?

The devil wants us to live in fear because fear paralyzes. God tells us over and over in Scripture, "Be not afraid!" It takes courage to live a truly Christian life, but the Lord provides to those who trust in His grace.

John the Baptist is the voice and the dawn preparing the way for the Lord.

What is your fixed point? How do you find direction? Christ must be our orientem, our fixed point.

This Sunday we celebrate the solemnity of the Ascension of Our Lord Jesus Christ into heaven. Technically, the feast is on the fortieth day of Easter, which was this past Thursday, but the celebration is moved to Sunday to facilitate a greater participation of the faithful in the celebration. Before He ascended into heaven, Jesus commanded His apostles and disciples to pray for the coming of the Holy Spirit. Ten days later the Holy Spirit descended on them at the feast of Pentecost.

Some thoughts on our day from St Catherine.

Reflecting on motherhood and the role of the mother in our present crisis.

It's a difficult time to be both sheep and shepherds.

Asking the intercession of Our Blessed Mother to open our eyes on the road to Emmaus.

Locked doors and open wounds

Entering the tomb and the silence of death.

Don't fall into the trap of letting Lent continue into Easter.

Passion Sunday reminds us that Jesus is often hidden from us. He is not always present in the way we desire, but He is teaching us to love Him more perfectly when He hides.

God enters into the world at the Annunciation, it is a new creation, and He desire to begin anew with us in the Sacraments.

We continue our journey in the desert, but we're not without sight. God is calling us to rely upon His grace and to grow deeper in our trust in His Holy Will.

St. Joseph had to leave all that was familiar to follow God's will. He is a powerful intercessor for our time of trial.

God tested his people in the desert. As we begin this time without Sunday Masses, however long that may be, and as the pandemic continues to spread, we are being tested. Will we continue to trust in the Lord?

Mary is the new ark and that's why she dresses in blue.

Begin by doing the humble tasks of your state in life with love, and the Lord will grow your faith so that He can do the impossible through you.

We are both the rich man and Lazarus.

The new atheists are trying to build a tower - the good life without God - but they do not have the necessary material. Their arguments are superficial. We can look at slavery as an example of how they don't have the necessary material to complete their tower.

We can sacrifice goods we have in the present for future goods. We make a deal with the future so that the future is better. The opposite is credit, which is when we take from the future in order to get what we want right now.

The Curé d'Ars is a model of the essence of priestly ministry. Pray that we will set our sights directly on God and seek Him first.

Jesus founded His Church following the structure of the Old Testament priesthood. Pray for priests and bishops.

Jesus sets his face toward Jerusalem. Being a true disciple of Chist is costly. We must give up the security of thinking that we are in control of our lives. We must place our hopes in heaven and trust that God will give us what we need to accomplish His will.

The Eucharist is really, truly, and sacramentally the Body and Blood of Jesus. There have even been many Eicharistic miracles when the Eucharist changes not only substantially to the Body of Christ but also in its appearances. The miracles are meant to strengthen our faith in the miraculous gift that is given to us at every Mass.

Don't let your relationship with God just be quality time with a coffee table.

The Catholic feast of Pentecost is the fulfillment of the Jewish feast of Pentecost (the feast of weeks). God gives His chosen people a New Law, the Holy Spirit dwelling within them.

As Christ ascends into heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father, He promises to send the Holy Spirit to be with the Church and He tells us that we must proclaim the Good News to all nations.

St. Philip is a wonderful model for how reform must take place in the Church. St. Philip Neri, pray for us.

There are many obstacles to remaining in the love of God. The world, the flesh, and the devil try to distract and discourage us in many ways, but by utilizing prayer, Scripture, and the Sacraments, we are able to persevere.

As we celebrate the feast of Divine Mercy we reflect on how God's Mercy comes to us through Christ's wounds and it enters us through our wounds, most importantly in the Sacrament of Confession as we open our wounds to Christ.

Palm Sunday confronts us with the fickleness of human nature. In one moment we are praising Jesus and in the next we are denying Him and crucifying Him with our sins. Jesus knows us. He loves us. He gave us Peter and the Church to strengthen us.

Christ’s radical call to forgiveness is one of his most difficult teachings, both because it is usually misunderstood and because when it is properly understood, it is painful. Many people think that forgiveness means forgetting a sin or pretending as though there was no sin. We are told to “live and let live” or “you’re okay and I’m okay”. We’re not okay. People really do wound each other, sometimes seriously, and we can’t pretend that we haven’t been wounded. The reality of what forgiveness looks like is portrayed powerfully in the movie “The Passion of the Christ.” If you haven’t seen the movie, please watch it this Lent. The way Mel Gibson depicts the story of the adulterous woman shows what forgiveness really looks like. In the movie, Gibson identifies the adulterous woman with Mary Magdalene, who stays right by Mary's side as they accompany Jesus throughout his Passion. The only reason we know that Mary Magdalene is the same person as the adulterous woman is because of a flashback that happens after the Flagellation scene. Mary and Mary Magdalene are in the flagellation courtyard after all the soldiers have left. They see Jesus' blood on the paving stones. Mary takes some clean white linens, kneels down, and starts to wipe up the blood. A moment later, Magdalene kneels down to help. But instead of using one of the clean linens, Magdalene actually removes her veil and uses that to wipe up Jesus' blood. This is a way of showing how personal this gesture is for her. And in a moment, we find out why.

Throughout the Bible land is symbolic of God's love for His people. When they are living peacefully in the promised land, it means they are living rightly and receiving God's gifts, but when they are at war and especially when they are in exile it reveals that they have not been following His commands. In the parable of the two lost sons neither understands why their father gives them his land. The younger thinks it's so that he can do whatever he wants and the older thinks it's because his father wants him to be a slave. The land is God's love for us. It is a love that provides for us and sustains us.

The Transfiguration shows us the structure of the spiritual life. We are made to climb mountains; however, most people settle for less than the mountain of the Lord. How do we climb the Lord's mountain?

As we prepare for Lent, it's important to reflect on how we are doing as disciples of Christ and what type of fruits we are bearing. St. Paul gives us a helpful list of good and bad fruits in his letter to the Galatians what will help us to examine our conscience, root out rotten fruit, and cultivate good fruit during Lent through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.

We are told by the world today that we must be "tolerant". The language of tolerance, however, is actually the language of hatred. We tolerate ice storms and headaches. We don't tolerate perfect sunny days or amazing home cooked meals. Jesus doesn't want want us to simply "tolerate" our enemies. He wants us to love them, but what does that mean?

It's through the cross that we are made happy.

The Church is Peter's boat, but it is holy because Christ chose to stay with Peter in that boat despite the sinners, the storms, and days when there are no fish. We don't make the Church holy. We must be docile to Christ so that He will make us and our particular parishes holy.

Driven by envy, the people of Nazareth tried to kill Jesus following His first sermon. What is envy, and how do we overcome it's allure?

Jesus marks the true return from exile. He offers us reconciliation. See how the books of Ezra and Nehemiah show us the structure of how Jesus wants to bring us out of exile.

The wedding feast at Cana is a sign pointing ahead to Christ's crucifixion and the Mass.

The feast of the Baptism of the Lord marks the end of the Christmas Season and the beginning of Ordinary Time. However, don't let the title Ordinary Time fool you. This is not a liturgically empty period between Christmas and Lent. It is, in fact, the time "Post Epiphany". Begin the journey with Jesus at the Jordan River, and learn what it means to be His disciple as He prepares us for His eventual walk to Jerusalem.

The story of the magi coming to find Jesus encapsulates the story of salvation history.

The Holy Family teaches us the right ordering of the family. Every aspect of our life must be directed to the Father in heaven.

Elizabeth recognizes the Divinity present within the womb of Mary. Mary is the model for how we should receive Communion. The use of the word "fruit" calls to mind the sin of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden when they tried to claim divinity for themselves. How do we prepare to receive Communion following the model of Mary rather than Eve?

3rd Sunday of Advent - Gaudete Sunday - John is preparing the way of the Lord. He is the new Elijah. The exodus and the exile are coming to an end. The Lord is in the womb of repentant Israel. The sun is rising, and we rejoice that the Lord is near.

It's easy to become complacent about dogma and ritual because they can become too familiar. As Catholics we say and do many things that seem very strange to those who are not Catholic. Unfortunately, many Catholics today don't have answers to why we say and do the things that we do. Our lives are meant to appear strange to outside observers because we have been set apart by God, but if we don't know why we do and say the things that we do, then we are in trouble. The strange things of Scripture and Tradition invite us to look deeper into the mysterious workings of God.

Homily for the 1st Sunday of Advent, Year C. Our Lord warns us to be on guard against dissipation, drunkenness and anxiety. These are easy sins to fall into this time of year. How do we prepare for Christmas in a way that actually prepares our hearts for the coming of Christ?

It's easy to say that Christ is our king, but do we live as though He is our king? This Sunday I reflect on the history of the Israelite kingship and how the Israelites repeatedly failed to recognize the true king.