This is sermon is about the separation of Church and State and what to expect at the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. As always, thanks to the Benedictines of Mary who have graciously allowed me to use their music as my podcast bumpers.
This Holy Mass was offered for the soul of Christopherson Cortes. Ora pro nobis if you're already at the finish line.
This sermon is about Catholic entitlement versus Catholic reverence. The photo on the blog is the 1956 wedding of Prince Rainier and Grace Kelly, showing reverence for God and spouse.
The Little Way as Spiritual Warfare: Lining up the Liturgy of several seemingly-unconnected saints this past week: St. Michael the Archangel, St. Therese, St. Francis, Mother Mary and the Gospel of the 18th Sunday After Pentecost.
Although the pro-life movement’s arguments can be proved from science as much as religion, one of the reasons that I am so involved in the pro-life movement is based on this piece of theology: God imagined every person as an unrepeatable blueprint long before their conception. Since God is the exclusive Creator of the Universe, and since God is in eternity (two philosophical necessities to a world with only One God) this means that God imagined the blueprint to each person’s genome long before an individual zygote was ever conceived. Of course, “imagined” and “before” are words that fail us, especially since we are speaking of a God who exists [...]
My last blog post called How Many Will Be Saved? had a lot of shares but also a lot of critique. This makes for good Catholic dialogue. I want to respond in a short blog post to a few objections. St. Augustine wrote: "There are two things that kill the soul: Despair and false hope.”—St. Augustine, Sermo 87.8. Another word for “false hope” is presumption. The reason I included in my blog post all the saints’ quotes on hell was not to judge Hugh Hefner but to show how many American Catholics live in presumption of last-minute imperfect contrition. So, if someone were to read those saints’ quotes about hell [...]
In the TLM calendar, today is the external feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. Although this sermon deals with abortion, I tried to avoid extremely graphic descriptions of the violence. In fact, the families with whom I inquired after Mass had no problem with my vocabulary in preaching. Nevertheless, I would highly encourage parents to preview this sermon in order to first determine the level of age-appropriate listening in your family. Nota Bene: Future sermons will probably be released on Mondays, blog posts on Thursdays.
"And a certain man said to him: 'Lord, are they few that are saved?' But He said to them: 'Strive to enter by the narrow gate, for many, I say to you, shall seek to enter, and shall not be able.'"—Luke 13:23-24. Hugh Hefner died today, and even bloggers like Fr. Dwight Longenecker at patheos are promoting a very different attitude towards Hefner than the tradition of the Catholic Church. I don't know where Hefner is any more than Fr. Longenecker, and I'm not saying Fr. Longenecker has a theology that is wrong, but his attitude towards heaven and hell is very, very different from that of Jesus Christ in the [...]
The Mass and Salvation History, part 2. This two-part series is based on the stained glass around the high altar and sanctuary, here at the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Jacksonville, Florida. All of salvation history culminates in the single sacrifice of the Last Supper and Calvary, found in both of the center panes. The featured landscape image above is the sculpture of the Last Supper, found under the mensa of the high altar. Pictures for reference to the podcast are on my blog. They are numbered 1 to 9, going west to east with a north-facing high altar (still liturgical ad orientem, of course.) Today is 5 to [...]
This is a sermon on Padre Pio, suffering and love. (If you want to help spread these sermons, please click "Apple Podcasts" below and review this podcast on iTunes.)
