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Thank you for visiting. I hope you will enjoy the variety of topics to enhance your spiritual life. You can read them below or download them and read at your leisure. I have also added my Sunday Homilies.
CURRENT TOPICS: Notes on Mary + God Is Beautiful + Hosea, The Unwanted Prophet+
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All Soul’s Day – 2025 John 6:37-40
This is the first time that I recall All Soul’s Day being on a Sunday. What a wonderful day, and I call it “Wonderful” because it is, since it is a celebration just as good as All Saints. The only difference is that on earth only those with a miracle or two will legitimately be called “Saint” on earth by the Church, even though Saint Paul uses that title for his fellow Christians. Note that everyone in purgatory will eventually make it to heaven, but who knows how long?
So, what is purgatory? Are we purged? Someone explained it this way. If you were invited to lunch with the Queen of England, you would have to be shown how to act in her presence with proper etiquette like bowing, and using the correct title, how to use a napkin, silverware and in what order, and so forth.
Who knows, since no one has come back to tell us. Jesus came back from the dead but note that our Creed states He descended into Hell and on the third day rose from the dead. It says nothing about Purgatory, a place of purification.
Generally, we do not like to think of death, let alone Purgatory. If nothing else gets our attention, at least death does and what comes after. We pray that God gives us a little more time to get our act together. Saint Augustine once prayed in his younger days, “Lord, make me holy, but not yet.”
You see pictures from the Renaissance of saints sitting in their caves and cells with a skull grinning at them from a shelf or a tabletop. It was a good reminder of death, a reminder of what lay ahead and to prepare now. People also see scenes from the Last Judgement like the one in the Sistine Chapel where a few are going to heaven, some to hell and many still in Purgatory.
After attending many funerals, especially non-Catholic, one gets the impression from the service that Heaven is more like a retirement home with time for endless rounds of golf and socializing with people we never met but now have time on our hands to meet. However, we see many testimonies of people on the internet now who have come back from the dead and testify what it is like, good and bad.
The main reason why we celebrate All Souls Day is that we are reminded of the different possibilities in the afterlife, some which might not be very pleasant. I’ll also put my trust in God’s judgement and his unconditional love, rather than some preachers who seems stuck on the Hell and Damnation sermons.
Maybe it is time to talk more about my Dad. He was a WWII veteran and was stationed in the Pacific Theater, mainly on Bougainville Island which was strategically ideal place to keep tabs on Japanese ship movement throughout the Pacific. Dad never spoke about his time in the war. Once in a while he would mention Bougainville but usually reflecting on the natives that helped them during the war with the Japanese. It wasn’t until I was living at Governor’s Island, about eight years ago that the whole story started to come out what he really did there. It was then that his papers were released along with personal and official diaries which had been collected at the end of the war and stamped with “Top Secret.”
After I read those diaries, which I have now in my office, I realized what war for my Dad was really like, but one could never make a movie since it was too gruesome. And trust me, it was Hell on earth. It made Purgatory look like heaven. I realized that my Dad had PTSD big time, worse than the soldier who have returned from the wars in Afghanistan, Viet Nam, Korea, and all previous wars. Only this war in the Pacific was never talked about.
After I read the diaries, that was the first time in my life that I could finally forgive my Father for all the violence that we had to suffer as a family because of his PTSD. What a gift I had received, finally knowing the hell my Dad went through, never sharing it with us until he was in his late 70’s and 80’s. The men still living from his Regiment would hold a reunion every year and recount their war times, and slowly my Dad was able to begin healing spiritually and psychologically and talk about what the war was really like.
What is Purgatory? For me it will be a time when I can finally embrace my father and say, “OK, I understand, I forgive you, and I thank you for your service to our country, especially the time you paid with your suffering after the war all those years. I will always love you. Forgive me for not loving you unconditionally all those years.
So, brothers and sisters, let’s quit pretending. Life is difficult, but the next life will hopefully make up for it, only if we learn to love even unconditionally. Then Purgatory will be a time to prepare us that we may more fully enjoy heaven when we have made amends with everyone we have meet in our lifetime and tying up lose ends.
All Souls Day 2025 All Souls Day 2025
GOD IS BEAUTY – BEAUTY IS GOD
“Go Back To Where You Came From!”
Amos, The Unwanted Prophet: Part Three
Complacent Theology: more than ever the elite were confident that Yahweh was with them and that, Yahweh being who he is, the greatest of gods, they were the first of nations. Indeed, there appears to have arisen at this time an expectation that Yahweh might soon act on a certain day to bring them as a people to a position of unprecedented preeminence over all others. It is this complacent theology which comes under attack in several of Amos’ most memorable words.
Soporific Worship: Amos’ abhorrence of these practices in his famous diatribe against solemn assemblies, is transparent. And this is what is wrong with it. In and of itself it may be all right, but it distracts from doing what is really important, what Yahweh really wants. “But let justice flow like water and uprightness like a never-failing stream.”
“I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them…But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.”
“Father,” his son Joshua looks at him. “You look startled.”
“I am son,” Amos replies. “I had another vision.” Amos was speechless but tried to describe what he experienced. “At first I wasn’t sure whether I was daydreaming or having a vision or seeing the real thing.”
“Mother said you had these visions often,” Joshua said.
“This is only the third one.” he said. “I had thought they had ended after the last two.”
“Why is that, father?” Joshua said. “Mom said that the Lord God had relented and it would not happen.”
“This is more shocking than even the catastrophe of Locust and drought!” Amos said still shaken.
“I am afraid to ask what the vision showed you this time.”
Amos begins to explain the vision. “I saw a man standing by a tottering wall. It was a military invasion that would soon sweep through the land!”
“What does that mean,” Joshua asked, “a tottering wall?”
“It came to me that it represents the House of Jacob’s moral condition,” he said. “The high places of Isaac will be ruined, and the sanctuaries of Israel laid waste, and the sword in hand, says the Lord God, I will attack the House of Jeroboam!” Amos felt exhausted.
“Father,” Joshua looks worried, “Why is the Lord God doing this?”
“From what I have heard from our merchant friends from Edom, is that basically good people are being sold by the rich into debt-slavery for piddling sums,” Amos said angrily. “They are the ones who are bringing on this catastrophe that will punish the guilty rich and the innocent poor as well.”
“Our Edomite brothers that pass through our way north know a lot from their travels,” Joshua said with awe.
“Yes they do. From their travels they glean a lot of information that would otherwise be hard to come by,” Amos said. “Unfortunately, unless you live in Jerusalem or are the rich in Samaria, the rest are considered outside the covenant, especially the Edomites and the Moabites.”
Amos continued, “Another reason is that certain oppressed ones who prior to this time had been living on small ancestral estates were now being forced to sell under pressure from an upper class elite who were taxing and cheating them to death.”
“How unjust!” now even Joshua was indignant. “The very ones sold into debt-slavery could have been landed owners like ourselves!”
“Exactly!” Amos replied. “And to make matters worse, the rich keep the cloaks taken in pledge from the desperately poor as collateral for small loans and holding them beyond nightfall!”
“That is expressly forbidden in the Torah!” Joshua added.
Amos was proud of his son for remembering well the teachings of the Law. “And that is why my son we have the Law from God through Moses. Unless we keep the Law of the Lord God, then they are useless, but more important, it will make our people vulnerable to the pagans from other lands around us.”
“Father,” his son asks. “When will this happen?”
“Son,” and now Amos looks him in the face and answers. “I do not know for certain, but it may be soon. All I know is that when the vision is delivered to the North, the Lord God will put into action what he has warned he will do, unless the people repent. By then, all my pleading will have no effect.”
“But, Father, why you?”
“I do not know,” Amos honestly said. “Who knows the mind of God.”
Joshua asks one more time, “Will we be safe?”
“If we put our trust in the Lord and keep his commandments,” Amos said, “we will be safe. The Lord God has promised this.”
Go Back To Where You Came From pt 3
Go Back To Where You Came From pt 2
Go Back To Where You Came From pt 1