Living and Effective

Family life, even when it is crazy, is part of God's plan for our salvation. The home is the domestic church and we shouldn't think that the often crazy, loud, or rambunctious environment of raising children is devoid of God's blessing.

God's love shows forth in the birth of Jesus.

St. Joseph exemplifies the virtue of faith.

Our parents matter. Our destiny is in their hands. We don't think frequently enough of the fact that Adam and Eve are truly our parents and the nature we have comes from them. As we approach Christmas, we can see that God's rescue mission for humanity begins by reconstituting our family based upon grace. The Holy Family is God's beginning of a new human family with God as our Heavenly Father, Our Lady and the Church as our Mother, and Jesus as our brother.

Our Lady is the best...because of God. The solemnity of the Immaculate Conception is a sign of the triumph of grace over the devil, sin, and death.

A brisk cold plunge in the icy lake this week gave me an opportunity to be reminded of the amazing gift of God's creation. What is the meaning of creation? God love you and turtles.

On the Solemnity of Christ the King we reflect on the gospel imperative to serve God above all others and to participate in social and political life based upon the principles of Catholic Social Teaching.

On this Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica, we focus on the establishment of a church building, but the dedication of the basilica is about more than a church building. This feast is instructive to us about the importance of the liturgy in God's plan for our salvation.

All Souls day is a time to remember all the people who have died and are going to heaven, eventually, but they are still in need of purification in order to be ready for the blessed union with God that we call "Heaven." Let's dive into life after death.

Faith allows you to see things from God's perspective, and his perspective is true and life altering. The words of the gospel today about uprooting mulberry trees is a great challenge to our illusions of self-reliance and self-derived merit in the Kingdom of God. Mumford and Sons helps us with some images to see the world hanging upside down in dependence on the Maker.

Lazarus is no help for the rich man after the rich man dies and finds himself in torment. The rich man, like us, has Moses and the prophets, but even more, a Jesus has risen from the dead and his message continues to go out to those who have ears and hear today: beware of all forms of greed!Have you made an idol out of riches? The most concrete way to determine your attachment to riches and whether or not it has displaced God as the love of your life is whether or not you tithe 10% of your annual income. If so, that is a good concrete sign that you are not enslaved to wealth. If not, it is a good point for an examination of conscience.

What is going on in the desert when the bronze serpent is lifted up as a healing remedy to the Israelites? (Numbers 21) Diving into the Old Testament will give us greater perspective by which we can understand Jesus allusion to his own "lifting up". What is clear? The wages of sin is death, and idolatry is the origin of it. Jesus' blood is the anti-venom capable of healing us from the poison of the worship of Satan, the serpent, whose lies tempt us to doubt and deny God's goodness and provident love for his people.

What place does God hold in your life? What competes with God for our love, obedience, affection, and meaning in our lives? Our life is a choice. There can only be one ultimate love in our life. Is it the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob made flesh in Jesus?

Humility is a virtue that is foundational for the Christian life. But what is humility, exactly? In this homily, we look to the eminent theologian, Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange to help us.

Today's gospel touches upon the question of greatest importance for each of us. What does Jesus say about the question of salvation? Will many be saved? His answer is instructive for us. We must all enter through the door to be saved. We can't remain outside the Kingdom of God. The key is knowing that Jesus himself is the door through which we must pass.

The self-revelation of God's name to Moses took place in the context of a sign; a bush on fire, but not consumed. It is a vision of God's love that in the Incarnation of Christ will show forth the blazing, unfettered power of love in a humanity so pure that it is not consumed by it. St. Theresa of Avila met this Fire and was touched by it. The fire of God's love is meant to transform and illuminate each of us.

On this 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time, the reading from the Letter to the Hebrews is a Master Class in the life and virtue of faith. Faith is foundational to our lives as christians, but dynamics of faith lived out can often be hard to understand or difficulty to describe. Thankfully, we can look to the life of Abraham, our Father in Faith, to understand the pattern of faith in our own lives.

This homily explores what we expect from God. What do we ask him for? What do we really want from him?

In today's gospel, Jesus reveals his compassion and desire to heal us from our pain, our misery, our sin which leads to death. He is the good Samaritan and we are lying half-dead in the road.

Peace is the mark of those who belong to the Kingdom of God and voluntarily live under the Lordship of Christ, who controls our hearts by grace. Resistance to the Lordship of Christ results in agitation, fear, restlessness, and resistance of the offer of Christ's peace through receiving the Lordship of Jesus over our lives. Wherever you experience resistance in your heart around Jesus invitation to enter into our lives, is a place where we have not fully repented of our sinful isolation of ourselves from God.

On this solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, the Church celebrates the Roman Church's apostolic foundations. We dive into the necessity of the Church as the constitutive mediator of grace and faith as established by our Lord.

St. Thomas More exhorts us to remember the details of the Passion of Christ. In doing so, we will be moved to love Jesus in the Eucharist, even to the point of willingness to return a marter's love for the one who laid offered his life for us.

For St. Paul, faith justifies because it reestablishes a relationship of receptivity and openness to God. Hope does not disappoint because the God who is Love, is constantly loving us who turn to him. Prayer is essential to learning that you are loved by God.

The Ascension of the Lord points out to us that heaven is more real than our current experience of life. Jesus did not distance himself from us through the Ascension into heaven, but rather entered glory and entered a dimension that is not less real, but more real than the world that we can see with our eyes.

The importance of learning to recognize the voice of Jesus in our life is paramount. Prayer is essential to familiarizing ourselves with the voice of God.

"There is no offense, however serious, that the Church cannot forgive. There is no one, however wicked and guilty, who may not confidently hope for forgiveness provided his repentance is honest" (Catechism of the Catholic Church). The beautiful feast of Divine Mercy Sunday reveals God's unfathomable love for humanity. God's mercy extends to every sinner and is capable of overcoming every sin.

I thirst. One of Jesus' seven last words. His thirst is for you.

Do you realize what Jesus has done for you? Everything Jesus did on Holy Thursday was intentional. He was aware of the saving mysteries that he is instituting for your salvation.

Peter denies Jesus. How often do we weep over our sins?

Homily on the occasion of the solemnity of the Holy Family. The redemption of the world began with the sanctification of the home.