Monthly Archives: February 2012

What a great bio, Naval Academy graduate, Rhode scholar, ++++

God didn’t make us for this moment alone, he made us so that we can be set on fire, so we can go out and set the world on fire… be the fathers, the brothers, the sons, the friends, that we were meant to be.

Start with John 1, from the disciples of John the Baptist following Jesus to the calling of Cephas.

What was the meaning of the 153, the number of fish caught?

The 100 represents Israel, the 50 the nations, and the 3 being the Trinity. St. Jerome disagreed with this, saying that there were 153 species of fish, so this represented the whole world (one of each fish). St. Augustine said 153 had to be the symbolic number, because 10 represents the Old Testament, 7 represents the New Testament …

The whole point is that they were going to crazy lengths to figure out the meaning of the number -even though it may have only been the number of fish, nothing more- but the truth was that they knew that John didn’t just throw away stuff, everything was chosen was right. After all, he probably wrote this about 60 years after the events that he described … he chooses only seven signs (a perfect number) to illustrate everything that Jesus’ life meant.

Let’s go back to that first question in this account. “Where do you abide, where do you stay?”. Jesus replied simply “come and see”, it was about 4 in the afternoon. Sixty years later he new what time of day it was?

Simply because this was his call, when he became a disciple … he was one of those two “disciples of John the Baptist”. He new what time it was when he entered into a relationship with “He who is”.

Catherine of Siena had a revelation in which God told her that “She was ‘she who is not’”. In other words, we are held in existence because of God ongoing creative love, a recreating, a merciful love in a dying world, a world without hope, a world sinking into despair.

Either Jesus is the Lord of all of our life, or He is not the Lord of any of it.

For example, tithing is an Old Testament concept. In the New Testament it’s not 10% … it’s 100%. In other words, the question becomes how much of God’s money dare I keep for myself?

Msgr. Swetland was raised in a good, solid Lutheran family.  At the Naval Academy he encountered a “peace” church, which told him that he was not welcome in uniform. He took that as a reason to stop being Christian.

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In every age there are Judas-types, and we have some in our midsts right now. It was a Catholic who wrote the HHS mandate, but they have made a mistake … they are waking up the Church.

This a moment where we have a choice – do we join the world, or do we stand up for Jesus Christ?

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So he left the faith and became a worldly person. For awhile he had everything the world valued – success, money, career success … and he was miserable.

Misery upon misery, as his success grew.

But God is the hound of heaven … He will never leave us alone.

When he was graduate student at Oxford he formed an eating group with seven people … four of the seven were Catholics, including two who were daily communicants. All four of them simply lived their faith. They had peace and joy, something he did not have.

He discovered that they had a real relationship with Jesus Christ, and were willing to answer those questions when asked, even though he was very anti-Catholic at that time. Because of this he came to the Church in his third year at Oxford.

Grad students evangelize grad students, teachers evangelize teachers, and so forth. “Like upon like” evangelization … that is precisely what Jesus did with the apostles.

Jesus calls us to do the same, in the world in which we live.

The biggest group of Christians are Catholics … the second biggest are fallen-away Catholics. We must reach out to these brothers and sisters … we must.

However, most of us have swallowed the lie that we don’t talk about religion, which means that shut up about the one thing that should matter the most to us, to them, to anyone.

If we introduce friends to other friends, why don’t we introduce them to our best friend? The one who knows us the best, loves us the most.

Yet we – particularly as men – tend to hide behind masks, trying to hide who we are, because we are masking the fact that we fear that if someone sees the real me, they won’t like us, and certainly won’t love.

We have to drop these masks – we are not ok, unless Jesus Christ makes us so, via the power of the Holy Spirit.

We need to become only one man, the one who has been elevated, healed, brought into a unity of life (see Christifideles Laici, JP the Great). Our society is in the mess we’re in because of the masks, the separation between our faith life from the rest of our lives, our destruction of the unity of life.

On the other hand, allowing Christ to build a true unity of life in us, then the world will change.

For too long, Catholic Christians in America Catholic Christians have been ashamed of Jesus Christ, we have hid our light under a bushel basket. because we have been lukewarm.

Jesus tells us what he thinks of lukewarmness in Revelations 2 … “because you are neither hot nor cold I vomit you out”.

This must change … it must.

Now it’s our turn to take our place, to be set on fire, to allow God to change the world around us.

Being the men that we are called to be is something intentional … we must choose.

The first stage is that we learn that we are the beloved son of the Father; if that doesn’t happen at home we must help others.

The second stage is we become something, find out “if we have what it takes?”. We take all sorts of risks to answer that question, many stupid things.

The next two stages happen together – we become warriors and we become lovers. We are fighting against powers and principalities that are not of this world … “nobody is going to mess with our family”.

In doing this we learn how to become the lovers that we are called to be. We have to posses ourselves enough that we can give ourselves away.

Every morning we should wake up as ask “how can we serve our brides today, how can we serve our kids?”. Jesus washed the feet of his disciples … this is the model of self-sacrificial love that we are called to live. B16 said that in doing this Jesus exalted his disciples, he lifted them up to heaven.

We must exhibit this self-sacrificial love, if we are called to be the spiritual leaders in our family.

The next stage is to be king, which cannot be as it is with the Gentiles … must be of service.

B16 said that “the world offers us comfort, but we weren’t made for comfort … we are made for greatness“. The great amongst us are those who serve the rest.

God wants this. As a matter of fact, the only tragedy in life is to not become the saint that we were meant to be … lives of heroic virtue.

Every one of us ought to be canonizable … we must let the Spirit of the Lord transform us … we must be made perfect even as the heavenly Father is perfect.

The last stage is that of sage … we no longer rule, we are wise and prayer warriors for others. As we age we must sanctify our diminishments. This is culturally antithetical, which is youth-obsessed.

We don’t honor the elderly, because we have substituted comfort for greatness. We must change this, and honor those who have fought the good fight, in season and out.

These stages he borrows from John Eldridge, btw.

All of these stages must be sanctified by God, at each stage we must choose … “as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord”.

Some of us may be called to be martyrs, but for most of us we are simply called to the white martyrdom of following the Lord every day in our life, in season and out.

Praised be Jesus Christ … now and forever!

Deacon Ralph Poyo is a lay evangelist, who’s hilarious. He has five daughters (including twins).

They are the love of his life, and God has used them to change his heart.

He had an early addiction to pornography, first exposed at age 9, full blown addiction at age 12. He quickly became a predator who wanted to use and abuse every female that came around.

He became a predator, but we were born to be protectors.

We are not doing a good job, we’re bound and broken, we desperately need Jesus Christ. Only those men who experience this conversion have any idea what he’s talking about.

We’ve been trained to “play church”, but the truth is we have no idea what to do. We are in desperate need of an intimate relationship with the living God, not when we die, but the living God who is right now.

That is the only way that we can truly become protectors, become what God made us to be.

The unspoken question: do I really have what it takes to come against the threats that are coming are way?

Or said another way, what is it that would make a first century father willing to declare that they were a follower of Jesus Christ, knowing that would mean certain and immediate death?

Certain death for him and his family? Deacon Poyo then graphically described families being fed to the lions, of the human tiki torches that Nero used to light his parties.

So with that in mind, what is it that would enable that Christian father to say yes to the heinous question? We need to find out what that was, because we need it today.

Amen.

To hold on to Christ is far more important than to avoid death at a persecutors hands.

What is the mission that Christ gave us? What did he give us? What was the target?

But before we know one key principle – we cannot give what we do not have. In other words, if we don’t have the reality of Jesus Christ pulsing through our hearts, through our very beings we cannot give it away; rather, we can only teach people to “play church”.

Look at how Jesus formed the apostles. Three years of living together, working together, proclaiming and living the Gospel … this is the relational model of ministry, of apostolate. Then Jesus dies … then rises again.

Now what?

What did Jesus do? He wanted to see if his apostles actually wanted to know Him, not just know about Him.

Then He leaves, and send the Holy Spirit. Now crazy things happen, profound things.

The mission that was given to Jesus Christ was also given to the Spirit, the breath of God.  The Holy Spirt then gives that same mission to each who wants to receive.

Jesus passed along His mission many times, including in a particular way in the road to Emmaus. When Jesus left, those two disciples said “were not our hearts burning?” … this was the work of the Holy Spirit.

At the end of Acts 2, “they were cut to the heart and said brothers, what should we now do?”.

In other words, what do we need to do to get what you have?

The answer? Repent and be baptized.

Of course, we have generally done a bad job of catechizing repentance. It’s more than saying “I’m sorry” … it’s much, much more.

Salvation is a free gift, but discipleship costs everything.

Authentic repentance means that we quit being God, quit living by our own rules, that we live by God’s rules.

Are we prepared to do this? Are we prepared to lead our spouse and our children, through our hearts, to Christ?

It took Deacon Poyo 11 years for Christ to free him from his addiction to pornography, once he had decided to repent.

Next up: be baptized.

If we were baptized as children, is that enough?

Our baptism requires continual conversion, so in that sense our baptism is continual, because our conversion is continual.

He then used the analogy of chocolate milk (same as Paul Masek!).

What do we want … do we want our stuff, or the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the only one who can truly change us?

Make it clear: if we’re not leading our spouse and our children to Jesus Christ, we’re leading them … elsewhere, the only other possible outcome.

If we’re going to be real honest, the number 1 religion in our country is hedonism. We make decisions based upon deception, fear, and shame. Instant gratification rather than eternal happiness. Selling our birthright for trash.

Fr. Joe Kempf is talking  on the meaning of forgiveness, both seeking and receiving. This will be in three parts – realizing the need to seek forgiveness, the older brother, and the mercy of God available in reconciliation.

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If you only know one story from the Bible, know the parable of the Prodigal Son (aka the Forgiving Father).

In the prodigal son the actions of the father are truly remarkable – the son had basically said that he wised the father dead.

The invitation from God is to come home to a true and everlasting life.

Think of Peter betrayed Jesus, and their encounter afterwards … why did Peter weep? Fr. Joe thinks that Peter wept because he realized, for the first time, just how much Jesus loved him.

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The older brother falls into the trap that many people who have faith fall into … we think that we are above others, that we do not need the mercy that others need (the trap of the Pharisees).

The five misunderstands of forgiveness:

1. To act like no wrong was done.
2. To forgive is to put myself in the situation where we can be wronged again and again.
3. To think that it is optional. To not forgive has been likened to drinking rat poison, then waiting for the rat to die. In other words, carrying around the lack of forgiveness is enormously corrosive and self-destructive.
4. To think that it would be easier to forgive if you get revenge first. Talked about a person who interviewed people that attended the execution of someone who’d hurt their family. Uniformly the response afterwards was “it was not enough”. Revenge is insatiable.
5. To think that it is a one time thing and then we’re done. For most of us most of the time it’s a continual process.

So then, how do we forgive?

1.  We make an act of the will and choose it.
2. We surround it to God.
3. We do steps 1 and 2 again and again and again.

Told a good story about about forgiving someone with whom he had conflict in the parish, and another story about a person who died before resolving a conflict with a daughter.

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The invitation from God is to come home to a true and everlasting life.

Reconciliation is the gift of the Church, the ordinary means for receiving the compassion, the mercy of Christ, the welcoming embrace of the Father (as in the parable of the prodigal son).

The good news is that the power of confession, in which receive the mercy of God, is not dependent upon the disposition of the priest to whom we go.

What do we confess? Do a good examination of conscience, then confess anything that we need to “get off our chest”, then those areas that we have omitted to do (think of Matthew 25 – the last judgement – “I was hungry and you did not feed me …”).

Then we need to make amends wherever possible. Have no concerns about what the priest will think, because truthfully they’ve heard all this and more before, and they receive a real grace for this.

Then start over again and move on.

personal note: Reconciliation has become one of my favorite parts of life. After going years and years without making a serious confession, and then stumbling badly and reaching out in desperation to our parish priest and seeking the sacrament of reconciliation, the ensuing reality of mercy, forgiveness, healing and grace were so overwhelming as to be undeniable.

After awhile I started going once a year, then once a month, now most weeks do not pass without finding a priest and making a (hopefully) good confession.

Mercy rocks!