Beginning Apologetics – The End Times Class 8 (Purgatory II)

Here is the audio from the class; here’s the notes pages, and here’s the PowerPoint Handout. 

I enjoyed the discussion Sunday about the question of the lack of the Sacrament of Reconciliation in non-Catholic denominations/rites.  I appreciate the thought that went into formulating the questions!  I thought I’d try to address that a little more here.  Since there are people waiting on the class notes and recording  though, I’ll do it in another post!

I am looking for feedback.  I am going to teach the course on The Eucharist after CNew Year’s, if I get a concsensus that it’s what people are interested in.  If you have another idea, please speak up!

Apologetics Text

Folks, the books didn’t come as quickly as I’d hoped.  Ah, well; they’re a small company, and they’ll get them here before next class I am sure.

In the meantime, the first section is posted as a .pdf file at this link.  Please download and print it, and take notes; we should have the books to distribute for everyone at the next class.

Celebrated a Funeral Today…

And words are not sufficient to describe the experience. However, being me, I had LOTS of them at the liturgy; here’s the link to the audio file of my homily:
Homily for Funeral Liturgy for Amiee Nicole Myers, born July 25, 2009, died July 27, 2009

Please pray for Mary (Hastings) and Dusty Myers, for their son Jacob, and for the repose of the soul of little Amiee Nicole Myers, born on the Feast of St. James, July 25, 2009, and born to eternal life on July 27, 2009, after 43 special hours of life with her family.

Homily for 6th Sunday of Easter: What Is Love?

Audio will be here when I get it posted later today; sorry I have been kinda quiet lately, but trust me, it’s been for the best!

Homily:

If you Google search on the word “love”, you will come up with a list of about one billion, seven hundred twenty million entries.  To print the definitions page alone takes twenty-three pages! 

And the page hits are all over the map.  Some describe physical love, some describe philosophical underpinnings of our different approaches to love, some make fun of love, and some don’t really seem to have anything at all to do with love.  Maybe that just goes to show that looking for love on the Internet is a sure-fire way to get confused about it.

In the New American Bible, the Church’s official English translation of Sacred Scripture, the word “love” occurs 537 times.  In the New Testament alone, the word “love” 251 times.  Love is important to us as Christians.

But knowing what love is…that’s even more important.  Understanding what love is, and what it is not, makes living the life Jesus calls us to live that much easier.

But what is it?  What is love?

The world we live in equates love with a lot of the wrong things.  The world, for example, would have us believe that love, and sex, are the same thing.  Particularly on television, and in the movies, we know that two people care for each other because they are in bed together!  Most of the time, the people aren’t married to each other; they sleep together because they “love” each other.  Love equals sex, in this view.

Commercials are a different story.  Advertisements often equate love with…stuff.  The more we give someone, our spouse, our “significant other”, our children, our older parents, the more we love them, the propaganda goes.  The stuff replaces the relationship.  The stuff substitutes for time.  And the stuff becomes the reason to work even harder, to work longer hours, in order to pay…for more stuff.  Love…equals stuff.

According to our times, a lot of things are supposed to be true expressions of love.  But they aren’t.

It’s interesting that when Jesus speaks of love, He doesn’t talk about any of the things I’ve talked about.  For Jesus, love is simple.  What does He say in the Gospel?  “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  Love…is self-sacrifice for others.  Love…is putting the other’s life ahead of one’s own.  Love…is caring for the other!  It’s pretty simple, really!

John explained more in the second reading.  He said: “God sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him.”  Our example of love comes from God!  God loved us.  God sent His Son to die for us, so that our sins would not land us in Hell.  And God calls us to love him, and to love one another, as He loves us. 

Jesus asks the apostles to remain in His love.  And He tells the apostles that the way to remain in His love is to keep His commands.  He even tells them why:  “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you, and your joy might be complete.”  Finally, He tells them what His commandment is:  “This I command you:  love one another.”  So by loving one another, by laying down our lives for each other, we achieve what God has planned for us:  eternal life!

But it seems so hard, doesn’t it?  “Laying down one’s life for one’s friends” sounds so…final.  It sounds like we’re supposed to literally die in order to prove we love God!

But that wasn’t his point, brothers and sisters.  Most of us are living the kind of life to which Jesus was referring every day!  Parents who work hard to provide for their families and to teach their children the ways of God are laying down their lives for their families, and loving as Jesus loved!  Those who care for an ailing spouse or child;  those who help to take care of an elderly parent or neighbor; those who volunteer in our school, are all sacrificing some of themselves, laying down their lives to an extent, and obeying Christ’s command! 

Some among us are doing even more.  Our priests are married to us all, and serve our community by completely donating their lives to us.  Consecrated men and women, those in serving the Church in religious vocations, lay down their lives for the Kingdom every day.

Do we fail sometimes?  Absolutely.  Sin, by it very definition, is selfishness.  And whenever we fail to love the other more than ourselves, whenever we place our own interests above caring for another, we sin.  But God still calls us to that radical love Jesus expressed in dying for us:  he calls us to lay down our lives for our friends.

 

What is love?  Love is sacrifice.  What is love?  Love is following God’s call to put the other first.  It may take Google over a billion and a half pages to explain love, but it only takes us as Christians a few.

What is love?  John said, “God is love.”  He also said:  “In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.” 

God sent Jesus to make the ultimate sacrifice for our sins, so that we could live forever with God in heaven.  This is love.  And we love by doing the same thing.  “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends”, Jesus said.

Who are we laying our lives down for?  Because that’s who we love. 

Let’s go love someone.

The Adoration Schedule on Google Calendar is finished!

Here’s the link:  http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=echipj%40gmail.com&ctz=America/Chicago

Go take a look, please, and let me know when you’d like me to add you to the list!

Adoration Calendar

I have no idea if this will work, but I am going to try to embed my Google Calendar version of the chedule for Adoration of the Blessed sacrament into this blog.  If this works, great!  if not…well, then…Oh well.

 

Well, embedding didn’t work, but here’s a link to it:

St. Ann Adoration calendar – just go to the date you’re looking for, and voila!  As I type, it’s only scomplete for March 6/7; the reset of the schedule as I know it should be up soon.

If you would like to be added for a specific time, just email me at chip.jones@stann.cdom.org, and I will add your little self to the schedule!

Reflections at the March for Life

I attended the Vigil For Life Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception on January 21, the eve of the March for Life.  It was a simultaneously uplifting (the liturgy (what I could see of it from the Crypt Church) was beautiful!), and humbling (the sound kept cutting in and out (and in and out), and we kept singing loudly; unfortunately, when the sound came back on, we were only in the same place as the upstairs congregation about half the time).  I am glad we were able to attend.  I hope the kids who went with me are glad, too.

Cardinal Justin Rigali gave the homily for the Mass.  He hit all the themes he touched on during the Youth Rally Mass, and in his remarks at the start of the March for Life; but something he said (and I am not sure what, exactly (sorry, Your Excellency!)) sparked the following reflection.  I am not vain enough to think that it will matter to many…but I am vain enough to think I should blog it.

To my brothers and sisters who are caught up in the culture of death, to those who have dedicated their lives to maintaining and expanding the freedom to kill the weakest among us at their most defenseless, I need to tell you:

You Cannot Win.

You can’t win!  Oh, you may win some skirmishes.  You may temporarily foist this culture of death which you hold in such high esteem on us all.  But…

You Cannot Win.

Slavery and Jim Crow were held as sacred to many, even in the supposedly enlightened North…but a Black man in habits the White House today. 

The scourge of fascism almost engulfed the world…but the fascists now have little to say that matters.

And your culture of death has threatened, too long threatened, the families o four nation.  But tens of thousands of children now march in the streets of our Capitol to say, “ENOUGH!  Enough hate! Enough death! Enough selfishness!

You Cannot Win.

Every child whose life you end is a tragedy.  But…every soul you send to heaven from the womb is a witness before God against you.  Those souls cry out to God on our behalf, that He might strengthen us, the living, to defend their brothers and sisters!

You Cannot Win.

We hate what you do.  And we will fight it with every fiber of our being.  Our country cannot continue to kill its children by the tens of thousands, every day, and hope to continue to survive.  And we hate the sin you commit every time you add to that death toll.

But, brothers and sisters…we love you.  And we pray for you, as well as for all your victims.  And we longingly await your conversion.

And we will welcome you to our ranks, when the full horror of your “choices” comes crashing in on you.  God extends His hands constantly to you, the same as He does to us.  We are all sinners.  We are all in need of God’s grace.  And God offers it too you freely, if you will just accept it.

“I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse.  Choose life, then, that you and your descendents may live.” (Deuteronomy 30:19)

So says the Lord.  And because He does, we beg you:  Choose life!  Because…

You.  Cannot.  Win.

You can only leave more destruction in your wake on your way to defeat.  But you cannot win.  Life always wins in nature. Choose life. 

You Cannot Win otherwise.

Homily – Feast of the Epiphany, January 3/4, 2009

Gospel/Homily Stream (sorry – too smart for myself by half.  I made the mp3 before I split the Gospel and Homily parts.  The Gospel ends about 2:45 into the stream, if you don’t enjoy my melodious voice that much…)

Get it?

According to the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, an epiphany is described as, “a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.”  We use the word often in the English language to refer to those “Aha!” moments, when something that we just couldn’t figure out becomes clear to us.

Our “epiphanies” are those moments when we “get it” about something, and they come about all kinds of things, big things, like the love of our life, and small things, like the solution to the Jumble puzzle in the newspaper.  Epiphanies happen to us all the time.  And when our “epiphany” comes, when we “get it” about something, we want to share it, don’t we?

The Gospel today, from Matthew, pulls together several threads from the prophets in explaining the Magi’s visit to Bethlehem to find Jesus.  And a couple of things are interesting, I believe, about this story.  First, who is it that’s even looking for this new King of the Jews?  A bunch of pagan astronomers!  Who missed it?  Everyone else!  The very people for whom Christ was coming missed the event entirely!

Second, where did this blessed event take place?  In a little back-water suburb of Jerusalem, Bethlehem!  The Magi went to the palace in Jerusalem, thinking that surely the new King they were seeking would be there; but nope!  They were led, first by a prophecy, and then by the star, to a little stable in a little town down the hill.

Finally, what happened to the Magi once they’d seen the Christ Child?  They were the first Gentile believers in Christ’s kingship; they prostrated themselves and did Him homage”.  They were open to the promptings of the Holy Spirit; they “departed for their country by another way” when they were warned in a dream not to return to Herod.  And they took the word of Christ’s birth away with them, out into the world, as the very earliest heralds!

We’re like the Magi in many ways, brothers and sisters.  One way or another, we all followed something to get here.  Whether it was the guidance of our parents, or the result of deep study and prayer on our own, we have all followed the light of faith into this church building, into this community, into the Body of Christ.

Many of us were unsure what we’d find when we arrived, but we came anyway.  Some of us searched first in the wrong place; where we were made sense to us, given what we knew then, but it turned out that we’d missed the mark somehow.  And when that “sudden, intuitive perception or insight” about Christ came to us, it changed everything for us!

Frankly, others among us, including myself, were more like the people of Judea.  Like the priests, and the members of Herod’s court, we totally missed Christ at first.  Maybe it was because everything was so routine.  Or maybe it was just that we weren’t looking for anything major to happen in our lives; church was one of those many habits that we honored (more or less, depending on how we felt on Sunday), but it was No Big Deal.  We saw no Star.  We were not aware of any King.  Life is just…life, and we just live it.  No earth-changing “perceptions here…”

But oh, brothers and sisters:  when our Epiphany comes, what a difference it makes!

Whether Herod and his lackeys knew it or not, Christ was born in Bethlehem.  Whether they paid any attention or not, something HUGE happened down the hill in Bethlehem.

And whether we choose to believe it or not, Christ is our Lord and Savior!  Whether we choose to acknowledge him or not, Christ died, and is risen, and Christ will come again!  And when we begin got embrace this truth, life will be different for us!

Does this mean that we won’t sin?  Does this mean that we won’t fall short sometimes?  No!  But when we encounter Christ, really encounter Christ, we will be changed!  And we will be able to follow “another way home” like the Magi did!

And it isn’t just a one-time thing, y’all!  Christ is constantly revealing Himself to us, in different ways!  And we should be constantly seeing new and different things about Christ, about our relationship with Him and with one another, which lead us closer to Him!

Even if we “get it”, there is always more to see, more to learn, more to “get”!  Every day can bring a new Epiphany for us, if we are just watching for it!

Epiphany: a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.

The Magi had their Epiphany when they arrived at the stable.  “They saw the child with Mary His mother.  They prostrated themselves and did Him homage.”  They “got it”.

Some of us have already had an epiphany.  And life is different already for those folks.  Some of us have already started to “get it”.

Some of us are still seeking.  And we’ll get there, if we continue to watch for the Star.  We’ll get there, if we continue to look for the signs that point the way.  We’ll get there, if we let the Holy Spirit lead us.  We’ll get there, if we get out of our own way, and allow ourselves to “get it”.

Homily for the 2d Sunday of Advent, Dec. 7, 2008

Gospel Reading for the Second Sunday of Advent

Homily for the Second Sunday of Advent, Cycle B

Road Construction

Have you ever watched a neighborhood go up?  Not an easy project, is it?  Each time our neighborhood got more houses, the builders would go in and start the work of preparing the way for all of the new construction.  They would make the little pathways that were there before wider; they filled in all of the ruts and gullies, and smoothed things out, removing the rocks, tree roots, and other junk from the pathway the new residents would need to take to their houses.  They “made straight the path” for those who would follow them.

And the spiritual mirrors the physical.  We are called, constantly, by God to build new neighborhoods in our lives for Him to dwell, new places into which we allow the Lord to make things new for us.  Advent is a call to the kind of earth moving that has to happen in our lives before the work of building the kingdom can happen.  And Advent is a reminder, at the same time that the same Christ, who finally arrived in the midst of Israel over 2,000 years ago, is coming again

And the cry of “the voice in the wilderness” from today’s readings is as much a call to us as it was to Israel at the time of John the Baptist.

What was happening in Israel when Mark’s Gospel begins?  Well, the Romans had been occupying Judea and Samaria for years.  The people of Israel were being oppressed under a puppet king, Herod, who lived off the largesse of the Romans and the misery of the Jews.  And the religious Jews had been waiting, for centuries, the arrival of the Messiah promised by the prophets, especially by Isaiah.

And then this John guy shows up, a scraggly-bearded wild man In camel hair, promising that the One they’d been waiting for was just around the corner!  And what did John call them to?  Repentance!  Conversion!  John called them to change the way their lives were going, in preparation for “the One coming after” him!

Paul makes clear what is expected of those who were waiting on the Lord to return, too.  Paul talks about how the Lord, when He returns, is going to return like a thief in the night, without warning.  And he states plainly what is expected of Christians while they wait:  He says they ought to be “conducting themselves in holiness and devotion”.  He says they ought to “be eager to be found without spot or blemish” before Christ, “at peace”.

This is how the Church received Christ back in the day; this is how they were taught to await His return.

But isn’t it amazing, the difference a couple of millennia can make?  We are so busy, compared to people way back then.  And we know so much more than they ever did, about everything, right?  And our lives are so full.  Our kids are in activities all week; we have homework out the wazoo most days.  And work demands so much of our time.  And what about the financial crisis?  The hit we’ve taken in our 401(k)?  Our mortgage interest rate?

And don’t even think about Christmas, and Christmas decorating, and Christmas shopping.  Christmas parties.  Christmas cards.  Christmas ads.  All this stuff we have to prepare for.  How are we supposed to even find time to sleep or eat, let alone do anything else, with all of this “busi-ness” we’re immersed in?

It’s a funny thing, brothers and sisters, but God really does call us to something different, a different kind of preparation, during this time before Christmas.  We call it Advent for a reason:  an advent is an “approach” of someone or something, and we are celebrating the approach, the coming, of our Lord and Savior!  And that celebration is two-fold:  not only are we anticipating the celebration of His birth, but we are also looking forward with hope to His Second Coming into the world!

But…what?  What are we supposed to do about something that, oh, well, sure it’s going to happen, but, well, it’s already been over 2,000 years!  I mean, it isn’t like He’s coming back tomorrow, right?

Or is it?

And whether He is or not, brothers and sisters…does it really matter when exactly He’s coming back?  Paul says, “the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a mighty roar and the elements will be dissolved by fire, and the earth and everything done on it will be found out.”  And Paul tells us that that the Lord “he is patient with you, not wishing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.”  And Paul tells us that our job is simple:  to conduct ourselves “in holiness and devotion,” “eager to be found without spot or blemish”.

In other words, Paul is calling us to make straight in our spiritual lives a way for the Lord to come into our lives!  And all of that stuff, all of that busi-ness, all the distractions of the world’s Christmas “preparations” make up the rocks and boulders, ruts and gullies, tree roots and other junk that have to be moved aside to make the path straight for the Lord!

So.

What’s in our neighborhoods?  Not the neighborhoods where our houses are, but the neighborhoods of our hearts?  What kind of roads are we building?  And what kind of junk is there that needs to be moved out of the way, to make the path straighter for our Lord to come in?

The world will fill our hearts with all kinds of worries and concerns , all kinds of junk that gets in the way of receiving Christ’s peace.  And we can create all kinds of problems for ourselves, with all of the things we let into our lives, both the blatantly sinful, and the things that just clutter things up.

This season of Advent is a time for us to consider what is truly worthy in our lives.  It’s a time when the Church points us toward the eternal realities of our lives:  that Christ has died and risen, and that Christ will come again.  And it’s a time when we are each asked to consider:

How’s the pathway into our hearts?  How straight is the way of the Lord in our lives?

When He comes, will He be able to find the way into our neighborhood?