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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 for Presentation on Mary + God Is Beautiful + Hosea, The Unwanted Prophet+
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Exaltation of the Holy Cross 2025
This is from Peter Kreeft, “The Bible is the most popular, most well-known, and most loved book in the world. The New Testament is the most loved part of the Bible. The Gospels are the most loved books in the New Testament. John’s Gospel is the most loved Gospel. And chapter three, verse 16 is most loved verse. So, John 3:16 is the most loved sentence in the world. You often see it scribbled on bridges and on cardboard signs held up at ball games. It says that “God so loved the world that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have ternal life.” That is the essence of the Good News of the Gospel, the essence of Christianity.”
Then Peter continues with his example using ants, but I’ll use my own example. I was given a dog when I was in Zambia. The pup was probably not even weaned from the mother. They probably would have drowned it as I found out later, simply because it simply had undesirable traits. It was a Cairn Terrier, white, short-haired, and curly, exactly the traits one did not want in the breed. I loved that dog, Jack, but one day it did not come home. That was the time when we sent the young brothers home for the holidays, and Jackie went looking for them. Where are they? Jack crossed the dirt road, which he was not supposed to do, and was almost instantly run over by a car that didn’t even bother to stop. Our neighbor, who rented the property next door, a Muslim, brought him to me. I was heartbroken, but deeply touched that the man, who saw it all, picked Jack up and carried him home to me. It was Sunday morning and I was ready to leave to say Mass at our boys’ high school chapel in Lusaka, Zambia.
Peter Kreeft continues but I’ll give my example instead again.
Imagine you kept dogs as a pet. They had free choice between the food you gave them, which would give them life and happiness forever, and an alternative food, which was really poison for them. They chose to mistrust you and take the poison instead. And your response to this rebellion was not to leave them alone to die, which would be what they deserved, but to save them, by becoming a dog yourself and entering their life to give them your own body and blood as the only antidote to their poison, and the only alternative good that would save them. You gave this undeserved gift to any dog that would trust you and take it. You knew the dogs would kill you if you came into their world, but you did all that anyway, just because you loved those undeserving, rebellious little dogs that much. You got nothing out of it. You didn’t need them at all. But they needed you. You did it out of pure altruistic love.
What a ridiculous story! Hard to believe, isn’t it? That is the great mystery of our religion: why should God love us that much? And the only answer is: because that ‘s what God is. God is pure love, and love gives everything.
So where is the cutoff point? Who gets saved and who doesn’t? Who gets eternal life and who doesn’t? There is no cutoff point. It’s for everyone. It’s free. Nobody can buy it, not even with the biggest pile of good works. It’s a gift, and you can’t buy a gift, because a gift is given out of love, and you can’t buy love.
This is the gift that we offer here at Saint Francis de Sales Parish, a gift of love that we have all received through our Baptism from God and we offer it to all who walk through the doors. All are welcome!
If we are truly the Body of Christ, then Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament meets Jesus in the Ecclesia or the Body of Christ. Yes, hopefully Jesus will meet himself in us through this celebration of mystery. Even though we sometimes as a Body of Christ tear each other apart through our words and actions, Jesus still comes among us each Sunday to meet Jesus again in the Word and in the Sacrament. So the Body and Blood of Christ again meets the assembled Body of Christ to become more like him, day by day, through love in action.
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