Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Gloria
Glory to God in the highest and peace to his people on earth. Lord God, heavenly King, almighty God and Father,we worship you, we give you thanks,we praise you for your glory.

Lord Jesus Christ, only Son of the Father,Lord God, Lamb of God,you take away the sin of the world:have mercy on us;you are seated at the right hand of the Father:receive our prayer.

For you alone are the Holy One,you alone are the Lord, you alone are the Most High,
Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit in the glory of God the Father. Amen.


We thank and praise you Father!

We thank and praise you Jesus!

We thank and praise you Holy Spirit!


I hope & pray that everyone has a safe and blessed Thanksgiving!

Vatican Concludes Study on Condoms

Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, who heads the Vatican office for health care, told a news conference on infectious diseases that the document was drafted with the help of scientists, theologians and other experts.

"We have prepared a detailed study on condoms from both the scientific and moral points of view and we have passed our study on to the Congregation for the Faith," Barragan said. "Now the dossier is being studied by that office and then it will go before the pope."

Sunday, November 19, 2006

He's coming back

I can't stress enough the importance of this lesson! DON'T WAIT! Go to frequent Confession, receive HIM in the Eucharist, give HIM an hour of your life in weekly adoration, and most importantly - THANK HIM for all HE has given you! You'll be ready then - when HE COMES AGAIN!

At the end of November and the beginning of December, the Gospel readings come from those teachings of Jesus toward the end of His life where He makes it clear that He will come back in glory and there will be a judgment.

(Just as an aside, this placement in the liturgical calendar can be a little misleading, because He actually says these things not long before the Last Supper. With their placement at the end of the liturgical year and the beginning of Advent, they take on a little different light, but they are still just as powerful.)

This is not only a part of the liturgical readings, it's also a part of the Mass itself. At every Mass, after praying the Our Father, the priest prays, "Deliver us, Lord, from every evil and grant us peace in our day. In your mercy, keep us free from sin and protect us from all anxiety as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ."

And in the Creed, we say, "He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end."

So the idea that Jesus will return is not foreign to Catholic thinking. For the most part, we don't dwell on it or speculate on when He will come again, but it is part of our heritage and belief. (I say, "for the most part," because there are some Catholics who do dwell on it and scour everything they can find to divine when the Lord will return.)

Why is this? There's a story of one of the saints that has a variety of tellings, but it gives in a nutshell how the Church lives this belief. It was either St. Francis of Assisi with his brothers out weeding in the garden or St. John Bosco playing billiards with a couple of friends. Either way, the question came up of what would you do if you knew the Lord was returning within an hour. One said, "I'd go home and reconcile with my family." Another said, "I'd go to Confession," and so on. They then turned to St. Francis (or St. John Bosco) and asked, "Well, what would you do?" "I'd keep on weeding" (or playing billiards).

In other words, they knew that what they were doing at that moment was what the Lord wanted them to do, and they also knew that they had all their affairs in order. Their attitudes teach a valuable lesson - live as though the Lord is returning at every moment of your life.

Father Cantalamessa on the End of the World

Jesus says: "This generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place." Is he mistaken? No, it was the world that was known to his hearers that passed away, the Jewish world. It tragically passed away with the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. When, in 410, the Vandals sacked Rome, many great figures of the time thought that it was the end of the world. They were not all that wrong; one world did end, the one created by Rome with its empire. In this sense, those who, with the destruction of the twin towers on September 11, 2001, thought of the end of the world, were not mistaken ...

None of this diminishes the seriousness of the Christian charge but only deepens it. It would be the greatest foolishness to console oneself by saying that no one knows when the end of the world will be and forgetting that, for any of us, it could be this very night. For this reason Jesus concludes today's Gospel with the recommendation that we "be vigilant because no one knows when the exact moment will be."