I am finally beginning to figure out this Windows media player on my new Dell laptop. I don’t understand why Microsoft lives to make everything to blasted difficult. Anyway, the homily for the 14th Sunday is online at Words of Hope, Ordinary Time category. No one threw any rotten tomatoes, so I guess it was not too bad.
Please pray for all priests and seminarians and support Sacred Heart Radio.
On this somewhat rainy Fourth of July, the grills are probably under the awnings or near the garage, butI’m sure they are going. Do you have any great fourth of July movies? The heading I used comes from the movie-musical 1776. It starred Ken Howard, William Daniels and Howard de Silva. I remember at John XXIII school in Middletown, the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades were bused down to the Central Avenue theater to see it because it was the Bicentennial Year. I think I was either in the 4th or 5th grade, I can’t remember which. I did like the movie because I was always kind of a history buff. It did cause controversy at the school with some of the parents, because they thought the movie was too adult. I believe they were especially upset because some kids told their parents that Benjamin Franklin referred to his son, who was the royal governor of New Jersey, as a “Bastard.” I honestly have to say I did not notice it, but I guess some of my classmates went home and asked their parents what a “bastard” was. I did not ask my parents those kinds of questions. Now 32 years later, with all the other words used, I doubt no one would even flinch at it. It is not a good thing, but unfortunately it is what it is.
Another great Fourth movie in my opinion is Yankee Doodle Dandy with Jimmy Cagney. “My mother thanks you, my father thanks you. my sister thanks you, and I thank you.” A classic. I also like the Mel Gibson movie Patriot, the cleaned up less gory TV version. I don’t know why Mel has to get so graphic, Unresolved issues I guess.
Anyone else have some great fourth of July movie pics? I am sure there are many more, but these are all I have.
All of us have lofty goals.Many of us make resolutions at the beginning of the new year and make special promises during Lent. While we have the best of intentions, it does not take long for other things to get in the way that cause us to “re-think” our original goals.
One of the most common faith resolutions that people make is “I am going to pray more. I’ll say a daily rosary or make a Holy Hour or just spend time talking to God.” Then, family issues, and job responsibilities and busyness get the best of us and we forget to pray or say we just don’t have time to pray.
St. Paul addresses this directly at the end of Romans chapter 8. For him, failure to pray is in a way a failure to love God. We can’t or won’t make time to talk with our most important Benefactor and Defender, to discuss our joys and sorrows because “we are just too busy.” St. Paul writes: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or the sword? No. In all these things we are conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor heights nor depths, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” God allows nothing to get in the way of his love for us. His love endures forever.
St. Paul reminds us that no matter what happens in this life , we must not separate ourselves from God. Prayers unites us to him. It gives us strength, determination and hope. Let us make a promise to God and to ourselves that no matter what happens, no matter how busy we may be, that we never abandon prayer to God. All things are conquered through him, even in the craziness and challenges of our lives.
Please pray for all priests and Seminarians and support Sacred Heart Radio.
Saul of Tarsus was a highly educated man. He was a Roman citizen and knew Roman Law and was classically educated. He was also a scholar of the Torah, having studied at the feet of the great Rabbi Gamaliel. He saw himself as zealous Jew, living out the Law and interpreting it strictly. But one day, on the road to Damascus, all that changed. When Saul becomes Paul, his new name exhibits a new wisdom. He realized through his encounter with the Risen Christ that the wisdom and logic of this world is foolishness in the eyes of God.
Paul makes this clear in chapter two of the First Letter to the Corinthians: “When I came to you brethren, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. My speech and message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of man, but in the power of God.” (1Cor 2:4-6)
For St. Paul, the wisdom of salvation and life does not come from human wisdom, but God. It is God who shows us his wisdom in that when we were lost to sin, he sends Jesus his Son to be our Savior. The Son shows his love for us by freely giving his life on the cross for the salvation of the world. When we have to deal with suffering, distress and oppression in the world, even though we have done no wrong, we can have the temptation to despair. Why try to live a spiritually and morally good life when it seems to not bring us any material bebefits? Paul teaches us another path. The Wisdom of God is the wisdom of love, the wisdom of sacrifice, and ultimately the wisdom of the cross. That is why when we look for answers to why bad things happen to good people, we need to follow St. Paul and look to the crucified love of Christ. It is there that we will find our answers, our hope and our peace.
Please pray for all priests and seminarians and support Sacred Heart Radio
Today, many people are worried about identity theft. Someone can steal a Social Security or Credit Card number, set up a whole new life and leave the real person holding the bag. There is something evevn more important though, than our material identity, and that is our spiritual identity. Sin robs us of our spiritual identity becuase it robs us of Christ.
In order to deal with the temptations and seductions of the devil, we need the proper defenses. St. Paul speaks of these defenses in Ephesians 6. He reminds us that our battle is primarily a spiritual one, so we need the armor of God whih consists of the girdle of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes of the Gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.
The girdle of truth helps us to recognize our need for God; the breastplate of righteousness is our right behavior, done with a humble and generous spirit; the shoes of the Gospel of peace help us go and be reconciled with those who have hurt us; the shield of faith protects us from the doubts and uncertainties with which the devil tries to tempt us; the helmet of salvation, which is the grace of recognizing the goodness of what God has done for us and, lastly, the sword of the Spirit, which exposes the lies of the world and the emptiness of the world’s message that seeks to banish God from human hearts and shows us the truth of God.
In the Sacrament of Baptism, we are given the identity of Christ. We share his life in a deeply personal way. It is an identity which we need to guard at all costs. Nothing ought to ever cause us to surrender that identity or have is stolen form us through sin. Paul teaches us that when we face daily battles over good or evil, we will prevail if we are interiorly and exteriorly clothed with these gifts, because it is Christ who is prevailing within us. This is from the heart of St. Paul.
About a year ago, I purchased a digital audio recorder and began taping my Sunday homilies, since some people felt they had not done enough penance by hearing me once and wanted to listen again. Now I have all but three or four of my homilies from the past year on 12 CD’s. If anyone is interested in them, let me know by email at FRIARBOP@aol.com or leave a comment below. I would simply ask for a donation of twenty dollars ($20.00) to cover the CD’s, jewel boxes and postage.
As you can see along the side of the website, I have WORDS OF HOPE also available for downloading or listening from Lent through the present. Most are about 15 MB’s big, so I would not encourage downloading through a dial up, unless you have a lot of time to kill. So if you have enjoyed listening to me preaching the Word of God, (Which next to celebrating the Mass, is my favorite thing to do), or you wish to engage in some very serious purgatory reduction time, I may have just the right thing to help you out.
Please pray for all priests and seminarians and support Sacred Heart Radio.
When we think of the mystery of God and redemption, sometimes the answers become a little complicated. St. Paul, however, keeps reminding us that the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the meaning of our redemption is very simple. In answer to the question: Why was Jesus born? St. Paul responds in the First Letter to Timothy: “The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.” (1Tim 1:15)
In other words, sinners could not reconcile themselves to God. Only God could do this and so he sent his Only-Begotten Son as our Savior to bind us to him in a new and everlasting covenant. Who are the sinners? Paul tells us in the very next verse that he was the foremost of sinners, one of the worst, but he was given mercy by Jesus for an example to those who were to believe in Him for eternal life. In the Letter to the Romans, Paul teaches that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” (Rom 3:24) With that, it is clear that Jesus Christ comes to save us because we are sinners. His mercy is shown by the water and blood that flowed from his side on the cross, that washes us in the waters of rebirth.
Jesus has shown us the same mercy that has he has shown St. Paul so that we too can be an example for those who were to believe in Jesus for eternal life. This mercy is so great that if only one person had sinned, Jesus Christ would have come and died for him. He desires that all people share in everlasting life. Paul’s joy in possessing this life impels him to tell others about the mercy of God and urges them to repent from their sins.
To be a Christian, we must we willing to admit that while we are sinners, God in his goodness gives us his Son, so that the sin that separates us from Him is not replaced by the grace that makes us his children.
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