Gospel, Homily and Coffee

At the End of Mark’s Gospel, Jesus tells the disciples to GO and spread the Good New At the End of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus tells the disciples GO spread the Good News At the End of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus tells the disciples that the Gospel is to be proclaimed to all the nations. Our mission as Catholics, is to GO and spread the Good news of Jesus Christ, the Good News that we have experienced for ourselves. So how’s it going? The name “Catholic” comes from a Greek word meaning “universal”. The meaning not necessarily that that Catholics are to be everywhere, but that Catholics are for everyone one. We Catholics naturally are to be inclusive. How many of us know that there are actually different “flavors” of Catholics? We here in the Diocese of Reno, in this parish of Our Lady of the Snows are the Latin Rite of the Roman Catholic Church. That is our flavor, our Rite. There are other Catholics who belong to different Rites, the Eastern Rites, and several of us serve here. I...

Powerful readings, all three, for this weekend. And I bet most of us, upon reading them and hearing them, thought “Yup--this is the problem with the Church today!  Those Cardinals and bishops and priests.” Or “Yup, that is the problem with the government these days!  Those presidents and politicians!” With their egos and ambitions, their desire for control and power! And I think we would be correct in that assessment. And, that can be dangerous.   Where are we in this? It is easy to point fingers, but our faith is personal. We love armchair quarterbacking, or monday morning quarterbacking as they can call it. That attitude that “If I had been calling the plays, we would have won. I know better than the coach”   We do this quite often, with many things: Sports, Politics, Church, Fashion, Movies... This is not a male personality trait either. Women, men we all do this in varied ways. We look at others, we judge and we indict.  Yet, how...

Last weekend I received double good news.  Two of my nieces and their husbands are expecting babies in the coming year.  I was sooo happy for them! BUT I they told me to be quiet until they announced to all the family. KILLER--in this day of social media, I wanted to share this happiness It is only natural right that when we have good news, we want to spread it. A transformative moment in my life happened over a decade ago.  It could be considered a conversion moment. It was when my mind, and then heart, were opened to Christ and his healing in a whole new way.  It was a time, over a few days maybe, in which finally Jesus, his teachings and his person, made more sense to me in a very real waY. It led to breakthroughs in dealing with my depression. It has led me to a deeper comprehension to the mystery of our Catholic faith and what it means, even to this day. It changed the way I preach and act as a priest. Christ will heal us.   This i...

Clutter. How many of us have cluttered homes, offices, desks, rooms? www.peacequarters.com Cluttered Lives? Personally, I do not like clutter.  It makes me feel closed in. It makes me feel chaotic, uneasy.  When I am cluttered, it usually means I am overwhelmed. Think about some of the reality shows about the excess of clutter..the hoarders.  And we as Americans, we need storage sheds, storage places, storage, storage and more storage.  We tend to have too much stuff. We are cluttered. Go look into the back sacristy! All that clutter can make it difficult to move about and to actually find things. Now, we cannot only have too much stuff that clutters our homes, churches and offices, but...we can clutter up our minds, our our hearts as well. Cluttered with so many thoughts, so many emotions, so much pressure. Which also means it is hard to get around too, in life. It gets hard to live fully, as Jesus and God desires of us. It can ge...