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ALL SOULS DAY

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  In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Today, the Church celebrates the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed...aka, All Souls Day First, let us reflect on the words from the Book of Wisdom: "The souls of the just are in the hands of God, and no torment shall touch them. In the eyes of the foolish, they seemed to have died; their departure from this world was thought to be a misfortune, and their going from us, a complete destruction. But the just are at peace. Though in the sight of men they suffered torments, their hope is full of immortality. After a brief suffering, they will receive an abundant reward, for God tested them and found them worthy of Himself. He tried them like gold in the furnace and accepted them as a sacrificial holocaust. On the day of judgment, the just will shine, darting about like sparks through stubble. They will judge nations and rule over peoples, and the Lord shall reign over them forever. Those who trust in...
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SOLEMNITY OF ALL SAINTS, November 1

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Today the Church celebrates... THE SOLEMNITY OF ALL SAINTS In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Reading 1 From the Book of Revelation.      I, John, saw an angel ascending from the east, holding the seal of the living God. He cried out in a loud voice to the four angels who were given power to damage the land and the sea, saying, "Do not damage the land or the sea or the trees until we put the seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God." I heard the number of those who had been marked: 144,000 marked from every tribe of the Israelites.      After this I had a vision of a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue. They stood before the throne and before the Lamb, wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice: "Salvation comes from our God, who is seated on the throne, and from the Lamb."      All the angels...
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Do You REALLY Love?

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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. The Liturgy of the Word A Reading from the Book of Exodus This is what the Lord says to his people: "Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt. Do not exploit widows or orphans. If you do, and they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry. My anger will burn, and I will kill you with the sword; your wives will become widows and your children fatherless. When you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do not treat it as a business venture; charge no interest. If you take your neighbor’s cloak as a pledge, return it by sunset, because that cloak is the only covering they have. What else will they sleep in? When they cry out to me, I will hear them, for I am compassionate." The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God A Reading from the First Letter of Saint Paul to the Thessalonians Brothers, you know how we lived among you for your sake. You became im...
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The Didache - The REAL Early Church

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INTRO      If you've been around Christianity for awhile,  someone may have told you this line, or you've heard it somewhere... maybe even YOU have used it: ”The early Church was simple. Nothing more than a house meeting. A Bible. Not much else.  And everything Catholics do today came along centuries later. The images. The fasting. The Liturgy. Bishops and priests.... All that jazz was made up centuries later.”     Fo r good measure, this may also include something about how it was all the Roman emperor Constantines' doing.      Interestingly, there are actually a lot of Christians who claim they undid all that “bad Catholic stuff,” and have reverted to just as it was 2,000 years ago. They even like to refer to themselves as, “apostolic.”     Well, first  off, there was no Bible widely available for centuries after the Apostolic period. So, if that is included, well, right away there's an issue. And if Constantine en...
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St, Paul and "The Law"...Real Talk

INTRO     I recently found myself drawn to St. Paul's discourse on, " the law ," while reading from Galatians. Its fair to say that I found it a bit puzzling. However, I wanted to move past modern, conflicting Protestant interpretations to discover what the Apostle truly meant when he wrote the letter.  So how to get there? By going to the source.     Rather than relying on individual, post-Reformation theories that arose many centuries later, I turned to the Catholic Church. She offers an ancient, continuous perspective; after all, she is the authority that originally compiled the Bible in the fourth and fifth centuries. Likewise, the Church has preserved and studied these texts in their true historical context from the very beginning, maintaining a consistent origin understanding without the habit of re-interpretation.      So, what is the Catholic perspective on, " the Law ," as presented in the Book of Galatians?      ...
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