February 21 Mardi Grad
For those who are not seriously overindulging this
Fat Tuesday. Here is my Ash Wednesday Homily to reflect on.
It is an audio mp3 file.
February 16 2012, MSW Ethics students
I have attached the study questions for the two chapters from Helming entitled “Know yourself” and “Own yourself.”
Please do what you can to have them ready to discuss tomorrow.
***LPS 302 Christology class cancelled tonight ***
Please keep reading through the Synoptic you chose and the Ratzinger book.
January 9 MSW Ethics students
The study questions for chapters 14 and fifteen are attached. The class notes for chapter 15 are also available for download.
Christmas Day Homily 2011
Christmas Homily 2011
For most of us, the word Christmas is a word full of wonder. It conjures up so much in our hearts. Christmas is so wonderful for us because it is full of MEMORIES. They started when we were little and asked Santa for that Raggedy Ann or Barbie, that dollhouse, that Flexible Flyer sled, that red wagon or Lionel train. When we got up very early Christmas morning, the air was fresh with the scent of the pine tree and bright with the colored lights and we saw the wrapped gifts that were left for us. When we got older, we see the excitement in the eyes of our children.
We also remember the sad times, the first Christmas after the death of a loved one. There were also the family arguments and the disappointment of not finding what we really wanted under the tree. All of these memories recall the joy and the sadness, the silly and the serious. They make up who we are. We need these memories to remember who we are and what we are truly about.
We also remember coming to Mass. Midnight Mass with the Baby Jesus being placed in the manger, the incense and candles and the singing. Children dressed up as angels and shepherds. We need to remember the birth of Jesus Christ in order to remember who we really are as well.
God has shown us who we are by taking on our human nature. He wants to make us his children, so his Son comes down as one of us. He also wants to give us back something that we have lost, which is ourselves. We have given ourselves away to many different things: jobs, expectations of other people, the demands of the culture, and even fear. It seems that things have become more of an obligation and no longer a gift. Most things are self-centered and not other centered.
Jesus Christ, the Son of God has been born for us to open up for us the real possibilities of love and life and joy. We see the Christ laid in the manger with arms open wide. He is inviting us to embrace him and love him and talk to him. There is also another time in which his arms are opened for us, and that is on the cross. The tree that gives us life is not evergreen and covered with lights and tinsel. It is hard and bare and Jesus himself is nailed to it so that he could free us from the nails that hold us from Christmas joy: regrets, resentments, our sins.
We gather together on this holy night around an altar of sacrifice. The priest asks us to lift up our hearts and offer to God our joys and sorrows and hopes and dreams. God alone can fill us with a joy and peace that is greater than any material gift we can imagine. God alone can free us from the suffering and grant healing to our sorrowful hearts. From this very altar we receive the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ himself. He is THE GIFT, that if received frequently with a pure heart, will keep us strong in the gift of faith and daily remind us that with the Child in the manger, God makes us a solemn promise: You will never be alone again. I will be with you always. I will be your strength, I will give you back yourself and fill you with life.
God changes all the rules tonight. He is so close to us. He is so real to us. We could not make it back to him on our own, so he lifts us up through Jesus his Son. He comes to us in the silence and asks us to listen to his voice that speaks of his love for us. He asks us to trust in him and depend on him by offering him a daily prayer of thanks and petition. He asks us to confess our sins not so that he can punish us, but so that he can forgive us.
Tonight and tomorrow, new memories will be made by each of us. May they be wonderful ones. God, however does not need a memory of us. He is always with us in the present. But He knows that when we DO THIS IN MEMORY OF HIM, when we offer this sacrifice together and eat his body and drink his Blood, we know that God has not just done something in the past. We believe that God is working in us right now, healing us and offering us his love. Let us always embrace the new born Son of God, Jesus Christ, and find in him our hope and strength, because he will never let us go.
November 29 MSW Ethics students
Study questions Chapters 11-13
Study questions for chapters 11-13 are available in the attachment above.
November 10, 2011 MSW Ethics Students
Chapter 12 Obligations and Sanctions
I have attached files for chapters 7, 10, 11, 12. they are in a .docx format so if you have windows Vista or 7 you should be able to open them. You can also open them in XP if you have the patch the microsoft provided. Let me know if you are unable to access them.
MSW Students Ethics study questions for Friday
Ethics study questions Good afternoon students, please click on the attachment to get your study questions for Friday. Also let me know before Friday which philosopher you wish to do your report on.
Easter Sunday Homily
Easter Sunday 2011
Today is a day to smile. Yes it has been raining for almost two days straight and there is flooding and gas is almost 4.00 a gallon, but today is a day to smile. There is far too much frowning and scowling and nasty looks of impatience. On this Easter Sunday, we really have something to smile about.
Some people may think we are crazy and others a little strange, but the frowns of sorrow, fear and anger are things of the past for Christians. We smile because we know with faith that Jesus Christ is alive, and for that reason we can truly live and act as God’s children by the gift of the Baptism.
We lived in a world where there is injustice, disease, violence, evil and death. Those things slowly but surely eat away at us, weighing us down and making life much more of a chore than a joy. God the Father had seen that this is what we had made of our lives. We went from a garden to a garbage dump and so all we could do is distract ourselves from pain and suffering until this life is over. We chose ourselves over God; our will over God’s will and brought about the seeds of our own misery.
God has always had one desire for all his people: to give them the opportunity to receive again what they so foolishly gave up and welcome them back to him. He sent Jesus his Son, born of the Virgin Mary to proclaim the Kingdom of God and that faith, hope and love can overturn doubt, despair and selfishness if we allow God to work with us and in us and through us. Just two days ago, we recalled that by his death on the cross, Jesus took upon himself everything that could have destroyed us and today we know that he has destroyed them. When we speak about Jesus, we do not just say that Jesus was there, but rather because of the Resurrection and the grace of the Holy Spirit we can smile and say that Jesus IS here. Right NOW.
Jesus IS ALIVE and so the lie that God is out to get us or does not care about us is replaced by the Truth that God is offering us a new opportunity to come to him in faith.
Jesus IS ALIVE and so the fear of professing and living our faith is replaced by the confidence that God has hidden nothing from us and invites us to carry our burdens with the certainty that we do not carry them alone.
Jesus IS ALIVE and so the selfishness that the world tells us is good is replaced by the generous and selfless love of being for others.
In Jesus’ death and resurrection, God reminds us that our true humanity and beauty lies in the reality of giving and receiving one another in love. The frowns that we wear and the regrets and resentments that we carry around with us are the result of thinking about ourselves as a people who believe their future is all about changing their past.
In fact, in the Resurrection and the Sacrament of Baptism that makes us true sharers in the resurrected life, we know in faith that God is calling us to look ahead. He is calling us to love more every day, pray more every day, serve more every day. In love, prayer, service and sacrifice we find the risen Jesus Christ. When we eat his Body and drink his Blood it is the glorified and risen Jesus that we receive. We receive life and hope and a love that will keep us strong when it appears that we are outnumbered and overwhelmed.
The life of Christ conquers the life of chaos that many of us think we have to endure, when today, he says to us a simple word: “PEACE.”
So, when you are out and about in your daily life, when you are overwhelmed and at your wits end, when you are on the verge of despair and think that life has gotten the upper hand, just remember this Easter Day, which is more than a day, but a whole lifetime. God is caring for you. You have God’s undivided attention. All you have to do know is love the Lord, love your neighbor and SMILE!
Easter Vigil Homily
Easter Vigil 2011
What are we waiting for? Why have you come here tonight? The answer may seem obvious to many, but it is still important to know the reason. Some of you may be waiting to get baptized. Others of you may be waiting to be received into full communion with the Church. Some of you may be waiting for all of this to be over so you can go and eat or drink the things you gave up for Lent. While all of these are good answers, they are not why we have come here tonight.
All of the answers I have given point to another far more important answer. We are waiting for Jesus Christ to keep his promise of Resurrection. In the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus foretold three times that the Son of man would be handed over, put to death and then raised on the third day. Is it true? We believe in faith that it happened in time in the year 33AD, but in that case, we can only say Jesus WAS raised. It is a part of history that we remember.
But is that all that it is? If it was, then we could only say Jesus “was.” But we say more than that, because we say Jesus “IS”. Jesus is not past, but present, and tonight he becomes present to you who have been preparing to receive the sacraments in a real, intense and personal way.
Catechumens and candidates, you join the thousands of men and women and children over the course of history that have come to this night to know if Jesus is real. Is his love real? Is his sacrifice real? Is Jesus really present in the world or not?
Tonight you find out just how real he is. You will be baptized into his death and freed from sin. You will be overshadowed by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit when the living Jesus Christ takes possession of your heart and soul and body in a new and mysterious way. You will then receive his Body and drink his Blood and begin in a new way to serve the Lord by loving him with your whole heart and soul and your neighbor as yourself.
The Risen Lord through the power of the Holy Spirit will be your companion in good times and bad, in times of joy and sorrow. You are no longer alone. The sin of Adam that has made us alone, empty and without hope is replaced by the powerful life-giving grace of the Risen Lord who makes us a new creation. You will now join with us as we work out our salvation in the joyful expectation that Jesus Christ will come again in glory and welcome us into the fullness of the Father’s Kingdom in heaven.
The debt we owed to God has been paid not in dollars and cents, but in Jesus’ self-sacrificing love on the wood of the cross. Along with us, your lives are now filled with new possibilities to make a return to the Lord for all he has done for you. Every new day God grants you is a reason for gratitude. Every breath you take is a reminder of the risen Lord breathing his Holy Spirit into you. Every action you undertake is now an opportunity for you to give a true accounting before others that Jesus Christ is your Master, your guide, your God and he offers you freedom.
This freedom is from death, which no longer has any power over us. This freedom is for love, for generosity, for sacrifice to make a gift of yourself and be a witness to others that Jesus not only was, but Jesus still is. He is still loving us. He is still healing and forgiving us. He is still leading us to heaven. He is still feeding us with his body and blood. He is still breathing new life into us every day.
This is the reason we are here and this is why we are waiting. We want to share with you the life of Christ that burns as brightly in us as it does on the Easter candle we have blessed tonight. It is what the Apostles discovered from the women who returned from the tomb. It is what we discovered when we first accepted the faith, and it is what you will discover in just a few minutes. Jesus has been raised from the dead. He is here, and he will never leave us.
