June 28, 2009 - Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

The Grace of Healing

As Jesus healed the woman with the hemorrhages and raised the dead girl to life, so Jesus wants to heal us today through the sacraments, through prayer and through the work of others.

I offer the following parameters so that we can understand how we can experience God’s healing and can cooperate with that work:

1^st - God’s work of healing is meant to help us following Him more faithfully, not necessarily more painlessly, but more faithfully.

2^nd - God’s work of healing begins by giving us the grace to pray when we face our afflictions.

3^rd - The grace of healing then helps us be clear headed and rational so that we are not overwhelmed by pain or by frustration in the thoughts we think, words we said or things we do.

4^th - The grace of healing helps us to take the practical steps toward being healthy and using modern medicine we need to so as to address whatever is afflicting us.

5^th - God’s healing helps us see our suffering as a point of connection with Jesus and His sufferings so that we know we are not alone and so that our suffering is not simply a waste.

6^th - Healing from God also helps us be compassionate toward others who are suffering.

7^th - The grace of healing reminds us that even if our affliction is not improving, we have the peace of knowing we have the opportunity to do penance for our sins.

8^th - The grace of healing also reminds us that we can also be generous and embrace and offer our suffering as a penance for the sins of others.

9^th - If any or all of the above ways we can grow from suffering require a lessening of pain, then the grace of healing will also include an easing of that pain.

10^th - Finally, as we heard in the Gospel, if we need an outright mending of whatever afflicts us, in order for us to be more faithful, then God still does ordinary physical healings.

So, for your homework, ask Our Lady to pray for the person we know is most in need of these graces of healing.

June 14, 2009 - Solemnity of Corpus Christi

Making a Better Holy Communion

Since today is the solemnity of Corpus Christi, I want to speak with you about how you can make a better Holy Communion.

Or to put it in the language of normal people: how you can get more out of receiving Holy Communion.

The reason why this is so important is that we are either getting better from receiving Holy Communion, or, if that's not the case, then we are receiving Holy Communion as a judgment against ourselves.

Of all the different pieces of advice I could give you, today I am recommending the regular recitation of the prayer: the Act of Spiritual Communion.

It goes as follows:

O my Jesus, I believe that You are truly present in the Most Blessed Sacrament of the altar. I long to receive You in Holy Communion. But since I cannot now receive You sacramentally, I beg You to come at least spiritually into my heart. I embrace You as already there and unite myself entirely to You. Please grant that I may never be separated from You. Amen.

I promise you that if you recite this prayer daily, or better yet - every time you pass a Catholic Church, you will be given the grace to have a greater appreciation for the gift of the Eucharist.

So that's your homework.

Now repeat after me: O my Jesus ...

Summer Shorts – Ten-Sentence Sermons for Sunday Mass 2008

Summer Shorts 14th Sunday 7-06-08

This weekend, as our country is celebrating July 4th, we naturally focus on all the freedoms we have as Americans. The question I want us to consider briefly is: How free are we?

We are physically free, if we are healthy enough to work, to play, and to live as we choose to live. We are economically free, if we have the resources we need and want to enable us to work, to play, and to choose to live as we want. We are politically free, if we have the social and legal climate available to us to work, to play, and to choose to live as we want.

While these freedoms, these worldly freedoms, are good, they can and do eventually get taken away from us, and if we exercise them poorly, they will cause us and those around more harm and suffering than we can repair. By contrast to the worldly freedoms, we are intellectually free, when we can see the
difference between truth and error, good and evil, and between facts and opinion. We are morally free, when we desire good over evil, and habitually choose the good and turn away from evil. Finally, we are spiritually free, when we see that as good as the things in the world are, and as good as we are, that God not only is better, but that cooperating with and being in friendship with the Lord is the paramount value in our lives.

These latter freedoms, the transcendent freedoms, not only cannot be taken from us, but they are: first, the reason we exist, second, needed to protect the worldly freedoms, third, can never be abused when they are used together, and fourth, what we should be most profoundly celebrating this weekend.

Summer Shorts – Ten-Sentence Sermons for Sunday Mass 2008

For the Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul

Yesterday, Pope Benedict XVI, in Rome, at the Basilica of St. Paul, inaugurated a Holy Year for the Church that celebrates the 2000th anniversary of his birth.

The value of this year should be both a growing general appreciation of his life and ministry, and also a specific improvement in our own spiritual lives. One of the benefits that can come to us from reading and meditating upon his works is that while the Gospels may tell what Christianity entails, St. Paul explains to us on a practical level, how to live it. Another benefit that can come to us from reading and meditating on his works is that he can help us become better shepherds, better parents, better leaders, better managers, and for me, a better priest. A third benefit that can come from an increasing devotion to St. Paul is that can help us with our annoyances and sufferings, our crosses, so that we bear them and at the same time grow in peace, in virtue and even in joy.

So how can we enter into and participate in this Holy Year? By taking St. Paul’s 13 letters, and finding that they consist of a total of 87 chapters, we could read a chapter a day and finish his writings in about three months, or read 1½ chapters a week, and finish his writings in about one year. You could also take advantage of the parish’s adult education, which will have some material about St. Paul, or keep track of the parish web site, where I will be having some
on-going material about St. Paul. A third possibility could be to stop by the Book Center of the Daughters of St. Paul in Alexandria, and pick up a book, DVD or CD about the Faith that you might find interesting and helpful.

For your homework, please pray for the bishops, priests and deacons of the Church, that
we take St. Paul as an inspiration so that we can share in his zeal to spread the Faith and
serve God’s people.