Guardian Angels
There are angels everywhere.
Every Angel ever created is at Mass.
Because Jesus is there on the altar in the Eucharist,
Adoring Him.
But most people are not aware of their presence.
Only those willing to leave the things of this earth
for the heights of Heaven can feel the flutter of their wings.
Only those who are dying can see them,
Because the angles are preparing to carry them away.
Only those who no longer desire to walk among the pleasures of this world
Can fly with them.
St. Therese of the Little Flower
Look at all of the stars in the sky and how they shine.
There are so many and yet each one is unique and has a role to play in guiding us and enlightening us.
St Therese of Lisieux was like a star in the sky.
Just one among millions.
How could she stand out?
How could she let her light shine?
She said to herself, that she was not a scholar, a priest or a bishop.
She was not a missionary and had no talents or gifts to make her stand out.
She was just a simple Carmelite nun living in a small, unknown Convent in Normandy.
What could she do?
How could she shine?
Until One day she realized that her gift was to love!
It was the greatest gift of all and the one that would last forever.
So she set her heart on love.
Love in the small things;
Love in the simple, ordinary, everyday things.
And because she did, she shone brightly among all the stars.
We too are all like stars in the sky.
There are so many stars in the sky there may be times we feel insignificant.
How can we possibly shine and light up the dark sky?
Like Therese, we may not shine through our intellect, or our standing in the Church or our great missionary activities.
But Through love we can shine and light up even the darkest night.
St. Jerome
St. Jerome spent most of his life in a cave in Bethlehem translating the Scriptures from Greek and Hebrew into Latin.
In doing so He wrote every single word of the Bible.
And in writing every word of the Bible
He really got to know Jesus.
So much so that he said,
“Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ”
How well do we really know Jesus?
That all depends on how much time we spend reading the Bible!
The Archangels Sept. 29
In our profession of Faith, we profess that we believe, God has created things that are “visible and invisible.”
There is so much more to life than what we see.
So often we rely on what we can see and hold in our hands to help us when even greater things that we cannot see are right next to us to help us.
God’s Holy Angels.
There are three main archangels and a 4th lesser known one always watching over us.
Michael the angel of strength;
Gabriel of Good News
Raphael of Healing
And Uriel of Light.
There is an Ancient Hebrew Prayer that is prayed in he evening for protection as one goes to sleep.
"In the name of Adonai the God of Israel:
May the angel Michael be at my right,
and the angel Gabriel be at my left;
and in front of me the angel Uriel,
and behind me the angel Raphael...
and above my head the Sh'khinah (Divine Presence)."
Addressing Differences. Lk. 9:51-56
The disciples wanted to rain fire down upon the Samaritans because they did not welcome them.
Jesus rebuked His disciples for such thinking.
When people do not welcome us or our opinions,
How do we respond?
Rather than rain down fire upon them
Or condemn them,
Maybe we should be merciful as Our Heavenly Father is merciful. Lk 6:36
Or else maybe Jesus will rebuke us too.
St. Vincent de Paul
All beginnings are somewhat strange; but we must have patience, and little by little, we shall find things, which at first were obscure, becoming clearer.
Make it a practice to judge persons and things in the most favorable light at all times and under all circumstances.
The most powerful weapon to conquer the devil is humility. For, as he does not know at all how to employ it, neither does he know how to defend himself from it.
Seeing, grasping 
and chasing. Mk. 9:46-48
Today Jesus is not talking about Heaven,
But about Hell.
While Jesus does not say
“Who is going to Hell,
Or if anyone is there;
He does describe it.
It’s sort of a scary place
“Where the worm does not die
And the fire is not quenched.” Mk. 9:48
It does not sound like a very nice place.
So Jesus gives some advice on how to avoid it.
At first the advice sounds rather harsh,
Almost extreme.
But if He had sugar coated it,
People may not have listened as closely.
So Jesus pulled no punches.
He said if your hand causes you to sin,
Cut it off.
If your foot causes you to sin,
Cut it off.
If your eye causes you to sin pluck it out.
Now Jesus did not mean this literally.
But He paints a vivid picture so as to get the seriousness of His point across.
What are you reaching for?
Is it going to drag you down to Gehenna
Or lift you up to Heaven?
What is it that you are chasing after in life?
Is it the passing things of this world,
Or the glory of Heaven.
What catches your eye?
Is it the glitter of gold,
Or the needs of the poor?
What are we grasping?
What are we chasing?
What are we looking for?
These are the things that will determine
Where we end up.
Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The Memorare of St. Bernard of Clairvuax
Remember of most gracious Virgin Mary,
That never was it known.
That anyone who fled to Thy Protection,
Implored Thy help or sought Thy Intercession
Was left Unaided.
Inspired by this confidence
I fly unto Thee O Virgin of Virgins
My Mother, to Thee do I come.
Before Thee I stand.
Sinful and Sorrowful.
O Mother of the Word Incarnate;
Despise not my petitions
But in Thy mercy, hear and answer me.
Amen.
Thursday 25th Week of Ordinary Time
Feast of Padre Pio Sept. 23
“Whoever does not meditate, is like someone who never looks in the mirror before going out,
Who doesn’t bother to see if he’s tidy,
and may go out dirty without knowing it.
While The person who meditates and turns his mind to God,
who is the mirror of his soul,
seeks to know his faults,
tries to correct them, moderates his impulses,
and puts his conscience in order.”
Padre Pio
The next time you look in the mirror,
May it be a reminder to pray
And look into the mirror of your soul.
The Guilt of our sins. Ezra 9:5-9
Ezra prayed That he was too ashamed and too confounded to raise his face to God.
For his guilt and the guilt of the people reaches all the way up to Heaven.
We seem to have lost a sense of “personal sin”
As everyone is busy pointing out what is wrong with everyone else on Social Media.
When was the last time you saw someone post
That they were the greatest sinner in the world
And that their sins reach all the way up to Heaven?
Maybe if more people prayed like Ezra
And less like the Pharisees the world would be a better place.
Feast of St. Matthew
One must not underestimate how sinful and evil of a person Matthew was.
He took advantage of the poor.
The more taxes he collected the greater his share so no one escaped his greedy hands.
He enabled the Romans to continue their political and military dominance of Israel by the taxes he collected.
He broke all of the laws of religion and the synagogue.
Whenever Matthew had a dinner party he did not invite the poor and hungry to dinner, or the religious.
Rather all of the guests were other tax collectors and sinners.
These were Matthew's friends.
No wonder the Pharisees were upset. Mt. 9:11
Matthew and his friends advocated the downfall of religion and morality.
So what did Jesus do when He walked past Matthew's tax collectors desk?
Did He condemn him.
Did Jesus call Matthew out on Social Media.
Jesus showed him Mercy! Mt. 9:13
To whom do we show Mercy?
Mercy is a gift given only to sinners.
Mercy is a gift given only to the immoral.
Mercy is a gift given only to those who seek to destroy the Faith.
The holy and moral do not need Mercy. Mt. 9:12
Jesus offers Mercy to sinners and tax collectors;
To those who deny God and seek to tear down the Church and who promote immorality.
Do we offer the same mercy?
Andrew Kim and Paul Chong and Companions
The first known martyrs are Paul Youn and James Kouen, who in 1791 refused to offer sacrifice on the death of their relatives. Over the next century, over ten thousand Korean Christians were executed, with great cruelty; and many others perished.
For most of this period the church in Korea had no priests and was an entirely a lay movement.
In all, 103 of the Korean martyrs are celebrated today: they are mostly lay men and women: some married, some not; some old, some young, some even children.
“The Korean Church is unique because it was founded entirely by laypeople. This fledgling Church, so young and yet so strong in faith, withstood wave after wave of fierce persecution. Thus, in less than a century, it could boast of 10,000 martyrs. The death of these many martyrs became the leaven of the Church and led to today’s splendid flowering of the Church in Korea. Even today their undying spirit sustains the Christians of the Church of Silence in the north of this tragically divided land.” – Pope John Paul II at the canonization of the Korean Martyrs, May 6, 1984.
As a Layperson, what have I done for my Parish and the the spread of my Faith?
The Testing Wisdom 2:12-20 Mk. 9:30-37
Faith is not for the Faint of heart!
Because it is always being tested.
How does one know if one has Faith?
Is it by going to Church?
Many people go to church and just sit there without participating or praying.
Is it when one is Baptized?
Many people are baptized and never darken the door of the church again.
Is it if one says the rosary?
Many people can say a rosary and yet never meditate on its mysteries.
The way one knows if one has Faith,
Is when it is tested.
The Son of Man had to be handed over to men and be killed.
Because this was the ultimate test
Walking on water is one thing.
But dying on the cross is another.
By dying on the cross,
There is no doubt.
If Jesus was faking who He was,
He would have eventually walked away.
No one who was pretending to be the Son of God
Would have played it out to the end
Through the betrayal, the trial, the scourging, the Crowning with thorns
And the agonizing Crucifixtion.
If He did not believe Who He said He was.
And so the world and the wicked
Want to know if our Faith is for real or if we are faking it.
So the world tests us as it tested Jesus.
It slaps us on the cheek with insults and wants to see if we turn it.
It persecutes us, imprisons us and even kills us, to see if we really do love our enemies.
The world wants to see if we love one another as Jesus
Commanded us or do we fight and bicker among ourselves like everyone else?
Our Faith is tested in small, everyday ways,
To sometimes big and difficult ones.
Our Faith is a daily carrying of the cross like Jesus.
But if we do then we will rise like Him,
And rise we must.
Above the ways of the world and its greed and lusts, and anger and jealousy and lack of forgivenesses.
For then we will know the True and Endless Joy of the Resurrection which no one and nothing can ever take from us.
And the world will know that we are for REAL!
