New Location for Sermons
My sermons can now be found on our parish’s website: https://www.stjohncatholic.com/sermons
Read more "New Location for Sermons"My sermons can now be found on our parish’s website: https://www.stjohncatholic.com/sermons
Read more "New Location for Sermons"St. Paul makes a spectacular claim in this Sunday’s second reading: There is something lacking in Christ’s sufferings. How could this be? How could Christ’s suffering on the Cross be lacking anything? Where could we possibly find a better example of a complete gift of self, a total outpouring of love? What more perfect suffering […]
Read more "What is lacking in Christ’s sufferings?"Last month, I gave a sermon on Good Shepherd Sunday on how to raise good future priests – future good shepherds. You might recall that one of the points I offered on how to encourage our sons to consider a priestly vocation was raising them to have reverence for the Eucharist. Since today is Corpus […]
Read more "The Habit of Eucharistic Faith"Talking about the Holy Spirit makes me nervous. For most of my life, I thought that being close to the Holy Spirit meant being obsessed with dramatic healings or with overwhelming and intense spiritual experiences. I think this is what most people think of when we talk about the Holy Spirit – the televangelists and […]
Read more "A Relationship with the Holy Spirit"You were made for so much more than this! That is the message of today’s Feast of the Ascension: You were meant for so much more than what this world has to offer. Today we celebrate the final event of the Paschal Mystery that we have been observing ever since Good Friday – the central […]
Read more "You Were Meant for More"One of the great things about our Catholic faith is that each Sunday, rather than the preacher picking a topic that he feels like it would be best to address, Holy Mother Church sets out a programmatic approach to the Sacred Scriptures and the mysteries of our faith. This is not just the selection of […]
Read more "The Spirit Will Teach You Everything"“I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (Jn 13). Heaven is all about love. St. Paul tells us, “So faith, hope, love abide, […]
Read more "Heaven and True Love"What does it mean to love someone? It is hard to capture in English what Christ is asking Peter in the Gospel today. Greek, the language in which St. John composed his Gospel, has many words for love, two of which John employs here – “agape” and “philia.” “Philia” is a love of deep friendship, […]
Read more "Do you love me?"“For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.” St. Paul writes today about a radical transformation of the human person. God allowed his Son to “become sin” for us – taking on the greatest effect of sin, that […]
Read more "Entering the Silence of True Prayer"It is rather late this year, but we have finally begun the holy season of Lent, this intense time in the Church’s life when we dedicate ourselves to what is most important: coming back to the Lord with our whole hearts through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. The first of these three ancient Lenten disciplines, prayer, […]
Read more "True Prayer at Mass"