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Showing posts from May, 2017

Morning Gospel & Coffee May 31 Trust in God

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Ascension Rise UP in Power

I love that image in Acts of the Apostles of the guys standing there, looking up, with their mouths opened...and the angel basically saying, “Stop that.  Go!  Do your mission!” Then we have Matthew’s Great Commission, the work, the mission; to go baptize all in the name of the Holy Trinity . It's the phrases though in the middle of this scene that centers us on the essence of our mission: power and Baptism Jesus says all power has been given to him.  He literally Ascends to the power and in power. What power is he talking about? We must be careful here.  When we get this wrong, when we misinterpret “power” then we hurt the mission of the church, hurt others and hurt ourselves. There is a stupid joke out there that illustrates the understanding of power for many... “If God is so powerful, can God create a boulder so heavy that even God could not lift it?” This betrays an imperialistic, macho version of Power. Power is to control. Power is Might!  Pow

6th Sunday of Easter How is God...How are we?

We humans were created by God so as to be as God. Eastern Christians, Catholics and Orthodox, call this “Divinization”.   We are not to be God. We are creatures and will always remain so We are created to be as God, or to be “How” God is. We know “HOW” God is through Scripture and most explicitly in and through Jesus Christ. “How” God is is relational.  God is Trinity, Father Son and Holy Spirit.   God is Love, as John’s letters remind us. If we truly want to experience God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit; if we want to truly understand God and therefore our own self, our own “How” must be love. This is our Gospel Today.  Jesus is not giving us a quid pro quo method, or conditional method that if we love Jesus, then we get the Spirit; Jesus is inviting us to participate in the How of God; to love Remember though, “Love” is to see the goodness.  It is not necessarily the affection that equate love with. Love sees the goodness in an another and within ourselves.

MGC May 18: Remain in Love with God

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MGC May 17 Remain in Jesus-- Contemplation and Meditation

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MGC May 16 Self-Surrender brings Peace

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Morning Gospel & Coffee Love as to know God

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My homily for 5th Sunday of Easter - God is here; look!

The search for God, it is so ancient.  It is a part of our humanity. We long to be connected to the divine.  We long for meaning, for wisdom; we seek to make sense of our lives and our place in the world. The brilliant part of this is that God, ironically, is easy to find. God wants to be found! God comes to us and says “Hello; Hola, Ahoj, Kamusta, Ciao, chào bạn” The problem we remain deaf to those words, blind to his presence, because we imagine God to narrowly. We either imagine God only sitting on a Throne full of might and power; or God sitting in judgement over all looking for the slightest mistake; or a God who simply does not care what we do, but loves us all the same. Therefore we lose out on life.  We lose out on the mystery, the beauty, the power of being alive. Christ confronts this with his disciples.  They are stuck in their own narrow vision of how God “should” be.  They have created God in their own image. Jesus confronts us. Notice

MGC May 11 God is wherever there is love. Seek him out

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MGC May 10 Jesus and simply learning to Be

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MGC May 9 Be open for LIFE! Says Christ

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Morning Gospel & coffee May 8 Ministry

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4th Sunday of Easter Homily Good Shepherd

Today is “Good Shepherd” Sunday and the Worldwide Day Prayer for Vocations. So we might be tempted to think that this Gospel only pertains to Priests, Deacons, and maybe those “professional” ministers, e.g. catechists, communion ministers. If so, we are losing out on something very important for our lives. We are losing out on life. And remember Jesus says that he came so that we may have life in the full. What is ministry?  What do mean we say we are going to minister to someone, or I have a “ministry”? Ministry, at its heart, is to help someone experience their inherent dignity, their inherent worth, their inherent Goodness. When we minister to someone we show persons they have a value simply because they are a person.   It is not based on their social standing, economics, politics, nor even on their level of morality. Every human person, regardless of their status, religion, whether they are still unborn or are on the verge of death, is a child of God, and d

MGC May 4 Follow this "law"and find LIFE

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MGC May 3 God is with us, for us, always

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MGC May 2 Law of Love

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Morning Gospel & Coffee May 1 Asking questions for a deeper faith

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