Saint + Elizabeth + Ann + Seton + Parish

We need to understand that God works in these spectacular and powerful ways. We need to be awestruck sometimes. We need to be humbled sometimes. Knowing that God works in these ways which are beyond our comprehension is right and good. But we also need to be able to see God at work in a way that is much more intimate and personally encouraging.

Even if you forget every other thing I said this morning, there are three things I don’t want you to forget:  Number one, spiritual obedience. Number two, witnessing. And number three, worship. These are the three things that bring the joy of Christ in our hearts.

There are lots of people who sit in the seats with Jesus, Sunday after Sunday. They might be attracted to him. Like Veronica, they’re interested in the image of Jesus. Or like Pilate, they may have heard something about him and they want to hear a little bit more. Or like the women from Jerusalem, they like doing good deeds, and the Church does good things, and so they are a part of the Church. But they’ve never looked Jesus in the eye. They’ve never seen themselves reflected back in the pupil of his eye. They’ve never spent time with him …

 God does not overwhelm us. God wants us to trust him. So Jesus let three of his disciples see his glory once during those ministry days. It was enough to pave the way for a Faith that would change the world. We can believe today because there is a credible eyewitness record that has been established by the Apostles. Peter and John both wrote that they saw…. and they testified that these things are true…. and then they lived —in such a contrasting way to who they previously were—so that people looking at them took notice that they had been with Jesus. Download Transcript

The more God’s Spirit controls us, the more we will be able to respond according to his character. So you see, as in the whole Sermon on the Mount, the emphasis is not so much on what we do in any given situation as it is on who we are. There are not enough rules to guide us in godly living, even if we could keep them by ourselves (which we cannot). But what rules cannot accomplish, God’s life in us can as we ‘live in the Spirit.'Download Transcript

We see Isaiah drawing two lines for us: the vertical axis and the horizontal axis. And Isaiah now lays down a fundamental concept: that there is a correlation between our vertical relationship with God and our horizontal relationship with our brothers and sisters. And I can’t tell myself, ‘Oh, Father Tony, I love God and I am making progress vertically,’ but that vertical progress has no translation to a horizontal axis.

You—you—are the light of the world. Not someone else. You. Where do you go to get light in this world? What sheds light on the events of this world for you? Where do you go to have light brought into the misunderstandings of this world? For those who know you, you should be the one they look to to find meaning and purpose to the events of this world.

A right understanding of what God has said and done through his Son calls us to dare to believe that we do not need to live under the burden of what consumes our world, either frantically seeking the so-called good or living in fear of the bad. Christian Faith turns the world’s common values upside down. As Christians, you and I are asked to believe that there is another world far more important than this one….. and then let that belief—that faith—affect the way we think and speak and act.Download Transcript

Jesus was wounded deeply when he heard that his cousin John had been arrested. As soon as Jesus heard that John had been arrested, His life changed radically. He left his hometown and the comfort that represented. He began teaching, healing. He began to surround himself with his 12 closest disciples. In the wounds of Jesus there is to be found the pungent goodness of God and the savory healing of the Lord.

What is it about human nature that is prone to divisions and divisiveness? What is it about human psychology—be it in our interpersonal relationships, in our intercultural relationships, and even in our inter-religious and intra-religious relationships—that is sometimes susceptible to divisions and divisiveness? What is it about our human heart? That’s the question.

Jesus took his human flesh from his mother. The Church teaches clearly, and has always taught, that Mary is not divine. She is human, a creature, just like us, created by God. When we come to faith in Jesus, we are adopted so that Jesus is our brother (Heb 2:11) and Mary becomes our mother. Then we are all one in Christ in his mystical Body. This Body, of course (as Paul explicitly teaches), has different parts, different roles, and different gifts. Not everyone does the same thing. Mary has a special role: She is Mother, because she is literally the mother of Jesus’ physical body, and as we are joined to Christ through the Holy Spirit as his mystical Body she becomes our Mother, too.Download Transcript

 The parable of Christmas … isn’t to bring the universe to me. but to open and expand my heart … that I might see possibilities in those who have no standing in this world, that I might see possibilities even in the darkness and the challenges and setbacks of my own life. When I think I have nothing to offer and nothing to live for and nothing more that can go wrong in my life, it’s in the midst of the darkness of that long winter’s night that we hear a tiny baby’s voice piercing the darkness. That’s that parable of God, making us unsettled, so that we can learn to trust only in God and no one else. 

God’s love is so intense that it consumes sin. We are invited to enter into the love of God with such abandon that all our sin is burned up. That actually happens in the process of repentance and forgiveness.Download Transcript

Have you ever thought that the Lord is drawing you deeper into prayer—where there are no words? Contemplative prayer is an ancient practice in the Catholic Church, but many think of it as something for monastics. In fact, contemplative prayer is used by people in all walks of life as an everyday form of prayer. This rich and meaningful form of prayer is one that Monsignor King uses frequently, and he shared it with us as the first gathering in our Advent Prayer Experience 2016 on the First Sunday of Advent.Download Overview and Guide

Scholars who study relationship tend to agree that the human heart is fundamentally dialectical. What that means is that the same heart that is capable of love is capable of hate. The same heart that is capable of laughter is also capable of crying. The same heart. That’s why you may have heard people say that love is like a candle in the wind. You need to guard it.

On  many  of  the  graves  in  Roman  catacombs  is  an  unmistakable  paw  print.  On  the concrete  that  seals  tight  the  graves,  there  are  words  and  symbols.  One  of  the  most common is a paw print. The message was about the deceased Believer: as a dog is loyal to  its  master  and  dependent  for  every  good  thing,  so  this  servant  of  God  was  loyal, depending on God and waiting for his or her Heavenly Master’s return.Download Transcript

Sometimes we can get so caught up in our doctrinal differences, we can get so caught up in our political differences—who is liberal, who is conservative, who is this, who is not that—that sometimes we forget that have one Lord, one Savior in Christ Jesus. That is the heart of our feast today: that, when all is said and done, regardless of the differences in our society, regardless of the differences in our community, it’s all about one Love, one Faith, one Baptism. And that’s why I think the gospel tonight is so instructional. 

We ought to live now, even now, as though we were citizens of heaven, because truly we are. The woes and worries of this Earth will always be with us. But as Saint Paul reminds us, the Lord is trustworthy. May we turn our lives over to the Lord. And in the midst of a world that does not support the Gospel, may we find that the Lord does support us and give us dreams beyond this world. 

 The saints in heaven can intercede for us, the Pilgrim Church. And all of us can also intercede for the Suffering Church, those who have passed on but are not yet in heaven… When we celebrate sainthood, it simply reminds us that there is a future.

God is always faithful. Look around you—there are signs of His faithfulness. In the breath we breathe, we see His faithfulness. In family, in the gifts of your children and your children’s children, we see His faithfulness. In the gift of our church community, we see God’s faithfulness. So there is no doubt, and it’s not a secret, that God is always faithful. But, truth be told, sometimes in life we deal with issues, we deal with we deal with events, we deal with situations that may want to make us ask, "But God, where are you in all this?"