After Mass the Servers, Ministers, and newly Baptized and Confirmed with their sponsors.
What Recompense can I give to the Lord?
Ordination to the Diaconate
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Blessed Food
An old Polish tradition, these baskets of food were bless to be eaten on the Feast of Easter
Good Friday Homily
It's hard to believe Good Friday is here already,
That the long season of penance has finally come to its end
to the Passion and Death of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Today we consider the cross and its implications.
Many of you have heard me say
that the Cross is really at the center of our Christian Faith.
Over the centuries there has been a debate in the Church
between the Latin west and the Greek eastern Church
over the relative importance of:
the Cross and death of our Lord,
which we Latin Catholics have always focused on,
and the incarnation of our Lord,
which has always been the emphasis for Greek Catholics.
Latin Catholics say Jesus saved mankind on the Cross
Greeks insist that it was by the very act of becoming incarnate,
becoming truly man that God saved man.
One way or the other if we realize what we are saying
when we say GOD became man or
when we say GOD died to save us from our sins
We realize the awesomeness of this mystery.
The fact of the matter is that in becoming man
God, the Son, accepted the totality of the human condition
As Gregory the Theologian noted:
what ever He did not assume He did not save.
Jesus took on our human nature, and with it human emotions, human intelligence, a human will,
and the one thing that was most foreign to God
--the human ability to suffer and die.
He also took on a Vocation, a calling from God.
God the Son, became humble
and accepted in freedom His Father's plan for Him
a plan that always ended in death.
Thus the Passion is not just made possible by the incarnation
it is integral to it--when the Son chose to become Man
He chose to accept the whole plan God had prepared
including the Cross.
The Cross is so important to our faith
because the Cross is a symbol of contradiction.
St. Paul tells us that the Cross is foolishness for the Greeks,
who were known for their philosophy and wisdom.
and a stumbling block to the Jews,
know to be God's chosen people.
But to us who are being saved The Cross is the Power of God.
The Cross is a symbol of shame, of punishment, and of death
that's why they nailed Jesus to it, but Jesus, trusting in the Father
Trusting in the goodness of God, changed all that!
The Cross is at the center of our faith
because it is the symbol of our destiny.
All of us are going to suffer,
all of us are going to feel alone and abandoned at some point,
All of us at some point in our life are going to die.
However, what God shows us on the Cross,
is that if we are able to accept this,
to accept the just punishment for the World's sins
and not just accept it, but embrace it like our Lord did,
offering our sufferings out of Love to God for others
then God, who is all good,
will change the symbol of death into the bridge of life.
Those who Crucified our Lord gave Him the cross to carry
because they hated and despised Him
Jesus accepted it because He Loved them
The Cross was a symbol of weakness and shame
Jesus made it the symbol of true strength and glory
The Cross was an instrument of executing a man
Jesus transformed it into the tool for saving mankind
Made of two beams one horizontal one vertical
The cross was meant as a road sign pointing toward eternal death
Instead Jesus show us how the horizontal of our life
Could be connected each day to the Vertical,
to daily communion with God.
St. Paul says, I glory only in the Cross of Jesus Christ,
we must make this sentiment our own, so that we can live for eternal life.
That the long season of penance has finally come to its end
to the Passion and Death of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Today we consider the cross and its implications.
Many of you have heard me say
that the Cross is really at the center of our Christian Faith.
Over the centuries there has been a debate in the Church
between the Latin west and the Greek eastern Church
over the relative importance of:
the Cross and death of our Lord,
which we Latin Catholics have always focused on,
and the incarnation of our Lord,
which has always been the emphasis for Greek Catholics.
Latin Catholics say Jesus saved mankind on the Cross
Greeks insist that it was by the very act of becoming incarnate,
becoming truly man that God saved man.
One way or the other if we realize what we are saying
when we say GOD became man or
when we say GOD died to save us from our sins
We realize the awesomeness of this mystery.
The fact of the matter is that in becoming man
God, the Son, accepted the totality of the human condition
As Gregory the Theologian noted:
what ever He did not assume He did not save.
Jesus took on our human nature, and with it human emotions, human intelligence, a human will,
and the one thing that was most foreign to God
--the human ability to suffer and die.
He also took on a Vocation, a calling from God.
God the Son, became humble
and accepted in freedom His Father's plan for Him
a plan that always ended in death.
Thus the Passion is not just made possible by the incarnation
it is integral to it--when the Son chose to become Man
He chose to accept the whole plan God had prepared
including the Cross.
The Cross is so important to our faith
because the Cross is a symbol of contradiction.
St. Paul tells us that the Cross is foolishness for the Greeks,
who were known for their philosophy and wisdom.
and a stumbling block to the Jews,
know to be God's chosen people.
But to us who are being saved The Cross is the Power of God.
The Cross is a symbol of shame, of punishment, and of death
that's why they nailed Jesus to it, but Jesus, trusting in the Father
Trusting in the goodness of God, changed all that!
The Cross is at the center of our faith
because it is the symbol of our destiny.
All of us are going to suffer,
all of us are going to feel alone and abandoned at some point,
All of us at some point in our life are going to die.
However, what God shows us on the Cross,
is that if we are able to accept this,
to accept the just punishment for the World's sins
and not just accept it, but embrace it like our Lord did,
offering our sufferings out of Love to God for others
then God, who is all good,
will change the symbol of death into the bridge of life.
Those who Crucified our Lord gave Him the cross to carry
because they hated and despised Him
Jesus accepted it because He Loved them
The Cross was a symbol of weakness and shame
Jesus made it the symbol of true strength and glory
The Cross was an instrument of executing a man
Jesus transformed it into the tool for saving mankind
Made of two beams one horizontal one vertical
The cross was meant as a road sign pointing toward eternal death
Instead Jesus show us how the horizontal of our life
Could be connected each day to the Vertical,
to daily communion with God.
St. Paul says, I glory only in the Cross of Jesus Christ,
we must make this sentiment our own, so that we can live for eternal life.
Palm Sunday
With my Polish Braided Palm and my Anniversary Red "Holy Apostles" Vestment I leave the Altar on Palm Sunday
Saturday, March 27, 2010
The Contrast
A Homily for Palm Sunday
given at St. Patrick's Church
By Rev. Fr. Ronnie P. Floyd, STL
What a contrast!
Today the world welcomes Jesus into the city of Jerusalem with shouts of Hosanna Filio David, praise of son of David! Days later, as we hear in the Gospel account of the passion, they greet Him with another cry--this time--Crucify him!
At one moment they want to make Him their king at the next they want to make Him a scapegoat. How good is our God for giving us this contrast to show us the difference between His way and our way.
The people had heard great things about Jesus, they had heard how he cured the sick, and healed the lame, created food out of thin air, and gave the blind sight and the deaf their hearing. They probably also heard that He even raise the dead! What's more He spoke with an authority not seen in Israel since the days of David and Solomon. And His message seemed not just counter-cultural but revolutionary--Jesus was preaching change and living in a difficult time in history--we know how much people like the idea of change--even if they don't really know what the change will be! And so they saw Jesus as the Messiah, but not the Messiah Jesus came to be, they saw Jesus as the Messiah that they, that the world, wanted. So they welcome Him as their King, shouting Hosanna son of David and taking palms down from trees to create a royal carpet all the way into the Kings gate of Jerusalem
According to tradition it's not hard to understand why days later He was betrayed. Tradition says they wanted to force Jesus' hand, they were tired of waiting for Jesus to stop pretending to be a holy roller, they wanted Him to take power, by any means necessary, and they were willing to use violence either to help Him or to force His hand.
The Sanhedrin also saw Him as the revolutionary, as a threat to stability and the status quo that guaranteed them their power. And so this Jesus who the people regarded as a prophet and who healed so many people, bringing so many to conversion of life is at the beginning of the week welcomed as a king and by the end of the week dies the death of a criminal.
Palm Sunday is all about this contrast, so often today we do what the crowds did to Jesus so long ago, so often we remake Jesus the way we want to see Him, as the glorious and powerful son of God. We strip the Passion and Death of our Lord from its ignominy and shame. We want a Messiah, a King, a God full of power, and so we twist the crucifixion around to make even this atrocity look quaint. It's not suprising that so many take offense at our Christian faith, claiming the one true God, a God who doesn't love us enough to save us from suffering and sin. The Cross explains this scandal, and shows us what God is doing, and how in reality this is so much better than our way of doing things. But it wasn't quaint, and it's so important to realize this!
No matter how much the world speaks of freedom, I believe what we really want is a tyrant. We want Jesus to be a superman God who fixes the world's problems with fireballs and bolts of lighting, a God who doesn't allow the sick to suffer, or the sorrowful to weep, who defeats death by simply keeping everyone alive, and giving them all spiritual Botox to keep us looking good. Instead Jesus comes into the world not to abolish the law but to fulfill it. Jesus lives by the same rules that He created for us from the beginning of creation, though He never sinned! He submitted to the rule of sin, that requires all of us to suffer and die in this life because of our sin, and the sin of the whole world. Jesus is God, and God is all-powerful, and yet He doesn't use His power to save Himself
What a scandal--this is the fact that continues to scandalize people today and it's because they think that the crucifixion was just play acting. They don't understand the Jesus was truly a man just as much as any of us
and that He really and truly suffered in every way the we suffer, because of sin!
Jesus allows us to suffer, no more than what He himself suffered; and He does this not because He wants us to suffer, but because He wants to show us that the World is Good.
The History of Creation culminates on Mount Calvary: God created the world and declared that it was good! We sinned by trying to choose for ourselves what was good. Our sin lead to suffering and death.
Jesus came to show us that if we can get over ourselves, if we can set aside our pride and willfulness if we can choose to do God's will instead of our own and trust God's plan instead of the World's, which over and over again causes sin, suffering, shame, and ultimately death! If we can go to the cross, with trust and joy in our heart like Jesus did, then God who created the World good will make good things sprout from the seeming evil of suffering.
This is the wisdom of God,
foolishness to the wise, and a stumbling block to the proud
but to those of us who are being saved the Power of God.
God's way is not our way, because we fool ourselves into thing that this material world is all there is, and that heaven, if there is a heaven, is just a continuation of this world.
ITS NOT!
Heaven is about a perfection that none of us can ever image a joy beyond all telling. As Dr. Peter Kreft noted the other day if we made a list of all the things we like most about the world and another of all the things we like least.
If we had everything we liked most in heaven and nothing we didn't like we would still become bored with heaven in the first second of eternity.
God's way is better than ours, it full of the mystery and surprise that cause true joy and happiness. The bloody cross and grotesque passion, which become the source of eternal life is just a taste of God's imagination and His goodness.
Each day the contrast we see today between the way of the World and God's way is set before us as a choice... ?
Until we start to choose to live God's way our Catholic faith will mean nothing, and remain powerless, because our faith separated from God's way of total Love is impotent; a silly moral code based on a sad story of a failed revolutionary.
God sets before us today and every day a choice, The triumph of worldly power or the sorrow of Calvary, which will you choose?
given at St. Patrick's Church
By Rev. Fr. Ronnie P. Floyd, STL
What a contrast!
Today the world welcomes Jesus into the city of Jerusalem with shouts of Hosanna Filio David, praise of son of David! Days later, as we hear in the Gospel account of the passion, they greet Him with another cry--this time--Crucify him!
At one moment they want to make Him their king at the next they want to make Him a scapegoat. How good is our God for giving us this contrast to show us the difference between His way and our way.
The people had heard great things about Jesus, they had heard how he cured the sick, and healed the lame, created food out of thin air, and gave the blind sight and the deaf their hearing. They probably also heard that He even raise the dead! What's more He spoke with an authority not seen in Israel since the days of David and Solomon. And His message seemed not just counter-cultural but revolutionary--Jesus was preaching change and living in a difficult time in history--we know how much people like the idea of change--even if they don't really know what the change will be! And so they saw Jesus as the Messiah, but not the Messiah Jesus came to be, they saw Jesus as the Messiah that they, that the world, wanted. So they welcome Him as their King, shouting Hosanna son of David and taking palms down from trees to create a royal carpet all the way into the Kings gate of Jerusalem
According to tradition it's not hard to understand why days later He was betrayed. Tradition says they wanted to force Jesus' hand, they were tired of waiting for Jesus to stop pretending to be a holy roller, they wanted Him to take power, by any means necessary, and they were willing to use violence either to help Him or to force His hand.
The Sanhedrin also saw Him as the revolutionary, as a threat to stability and the status quo that guaranteed them their power. And so this Jesus who the people regarded as a prophet and who healed so many people, bringing so many to conversion of life is at the beginning of the week welcomed as a king and by the end of the week dies the death of a criminal.
Palm Sunday is all about this contrast, so often today we do what the crowds did to Jesus so long ago, so often we remake Jesus the way we want to see Him, as the glorious and powerful son of God. We strip the Passion and Death of our Lord from its ignominy and shame. We want a Messiah, a King, a God full of power, and so we twist the crucifixion around to make even this atrocity look quaint. It's not suprising that so many take offense at our Christian faith, claiming the one true God, a God who doesn't love us enough to save us from suffering and sin. The Cross explains this scandal, and shows us what God is doing, and how in reality this is so much better than our way of doing things. But it wasn't quaint, and it's so important to realize this!
No matter how much the world speaks of freedom, I believe what we really want is a tyrant. We want Jesus to be a superman God who fixes the world's problems with fireballs and bolts of lighting, a God who doesn't allow the sick to suffer, or the sorrowful to weep, who defeats death by simply keeping everyone alive, and giving them all spiritual Botox to keep us looking good. Instead Jesus comes into the world not to abolish the law but to fulfill it. Jesus lives by the same rules that He created for us from the beginning of creation, though He never sinned! He submitted to the rule of sin, that requires all of us to suffer and die in this life because of our sin, and the sin of the whole world. Jesus is God, and God is all-powerful, and yet He doesn't use His power to save Himself
What a scandal--this is the fact that continues to scandalize people today and it's because they think that the crucifixion was just play acting. They don't understand the Jesus was truly a man just as much as any of us
and that He really and truly suffered in every way the we suffer, because of sin!
Jesus allows us to suffer, no more than what He himself suffered; and He does this not because He wants us to suffer, but because He wants to show us that the World is Good.
The History of Creation culminates on Mount Calvary: God created the world and declared that it was good! We sinned by trying to choose for ourselves what was good. Our sin lead to suffering and death.
Jesus came to show us that if we can get over ourselves, if we can set aside our pride and willfulness if we can choose to do God's will instead of our own and trust God's plan instead of the World's, which over and over again causes sin, suffering, shame, and ultimately death! If we can go to the cross, with trust and joy in our heart like Jesus did, then God who created the World good will make good things sprout from the seeming evil of suffering.
This is the wisdom of God,
foolishness to the wise, and a stumbling block to the proud
but to those of us who are being saved the Power of God.
God's way is not our way, because we fool ourselves into thing that this material world is all there is, and that heaven, if there is a heaven, is just a continuation of this world.
ITS NOT!
Heaven is about a perfection that none of us can ever image a joy beyond all telling. As Dr. Peter Kreft noted the other day if we made a list of all the things we like most about the world and another of all the things we like least.
If we had everything we liked most in heaven and nothing we didn't like we would still become bored with heaven in the first second of eternity.
God's way is better than ours, it full of the mystery and surprise that cause true joy and happiness. The bloody cross and grotesque passion, which become the source of eternal life is just a taste of God's imagination and His goodness.
Each day the contrast we see today between the way of the World and God's way is set before us as a choice... ?
Until we start to choose to live God's way our Catholic faith will mean nothing, and remain powerless, because our faith separated from God's way of total Love is impotent; a silly moral code based on a sad story of a failed revolutionary.
God sets before us today and every day a choice, The triumph of worldly power or the sorrow of Calvary, which will you choose?
Friday, March 12, 2010
The Cure of Ars on Prayer Fasting and Almsgiving
For the Holy Cure of Ars—Prayer, Fasting, and Almsgiving were not only Lenten disciplines but an every day way of life. Because while Lent is a time that reminds us of the heroic struggle between our Lord and the Devil in the wilderness the fact of the matter is that this struggle for our souls continues feast or fast throughout our entire lives.
As we read in the First Letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians (9:24-25)
While all the runners in the stadium take part in the race, the award goes to one person. In that case, run so as to win! Athletes deny themselves all sorts of things. They do this to win a crown of leaves that withers, but we a crown that is imperishable.
As we read in the First Letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians (9:24-25)
While all the runners in the stadium take part in the race, the award goes to one person. In that case, run so as to win! Athletes deny themselves all sorts of things. They do this to win a crown of leaves that withers, but we a crown that is imperishable.
Thus…I drive my body and train it, for fear that, having preached to others, I myself should be disqualified.
These words of St . Paul capture, it seems, the life that the Holy Cure of Ars lived. A life full of training and self-sacrifice at least equal in intensity to that of an Olympic Athlete!
Click here to download the entire PDF of the Lecture.
These words of St . Paul capture, it seems, the life that the Holy Cure of Ars lived. A life full of training and self-sacrifice at least equal in intensity to that of an Olympic Athlete!
Click here to download the entire PDF of the Lecture.
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