The PadreCast - Faithful Catholic Homilies

The word "deacon" means servant. That's their job. They are there to serve. To serve the needs of the Bishops and the priests. And there to serve the needs of the faithful. Deacons are ordained to "Christ the Servant". Priests and Bishops are ordained to "Christ the Head". A deacon's role first and foremost is to serve in those areas of the Church where the Bishops and the priests just don't have...

Spiritual beings have no power to create anything spiritual at all. That power only exists in the physical universe by what we believe as God's design. Why is this important? Because it helps us to understand in our attempts to create AI (artificial intelligence) something simple should be clear: it will never become self-aware. That's impossible. Dogs aren't self-aware. Trees aren't self-aware. O...

The Jews saw this gift of Law as the greatest gift that God bestowed upon them. He did it through His prophets, through Moses, by speaking His Word to them. As Catholics, we understand that Jesus Christ is the Word of God. What the old law symbolized, Jesus Christ is. The difference between the Old Testament law, and the New Testament Christ is that one is verbal and the other, Incarnate. An actua...

If the Pharisees and Sadducees knew it was the Lord, then of course He'd have the power to forgive sins, He's God. But their objection was legitimate. Honestly, it's the same objection that Catholics and Christians in general have about priests hearing confessions and forgiving sins: How can a man forgive sins? Why do I need to go to a man to get my sins forgiven? Jesus says you do. Jesus is the m...

The words that the angel spoke to Abraham are quite profound. He says: "I know now how devoted you are to God since you did not withhold from me your own beloved son."   God chose Abraham because he was most like Him, like God the Father. We know this because God the Father perfectly offered His own Son in sacrifice. For love. So if the angel says to Abraham: "You are clearly devoted to God becaus...

You'll recall that it was on this night that our Lord warned the Apostles to stay awake and pray. Stay awake and pray. Every time He went off a little distance to pray, He'd come back, and there were Peter, James and John. Fast asleep. They were just so exhausted they could not stay awake. He warns them: "Get up. Pray. You're going to be tested, you need strength. I've already given you My Body an...

Men, as the heads of our homes we have a moral obligation to speak the truth to our wives and our children whether they want to hear it or not. Regardless of the consequences. Now, we should do it in love, but we have to remember that obligation. So often, like Adam in the garden, we let things go on because we don't want to rock the boat. We don't want Eve to get upset with us. That was Adam's fi...

The Church has maintained this tradition of veiling because of what is symbolizes. Women, you are a "type" of the Church. Because the Church is the Bride of Christ, every bride represents the Church - especially every Catholic bride. To symbolize the Church's own desire for modesty, for chastity, and for submission to Christ, women wore veils. That's why whenever you see a picture or a statue of t...

We know He is the Light of the world. Those that live in sin, live in darkness - they are the blind ones. Those who have been forgiven of sin, set free, have their sight restored to them. Now we know Jesus is not referring to physical sight. Yes, in the Gospel He performed a physical miracle, but that wasn't the point of the miracle. He even said to His apostles before He performed it: the reason...

You see, hardness of heart is the main problem in our relationship with God and in salvation. But it's also the main problem in our relationships with one another. It's most clearly experienced in marriage, when you harden your heart against your spouse. Why do you do this? Well, for several seemingly justified reasons: they keep hurting you, over and over again, in the same way. You try to get ov...

One of the things (Pope Benedict) clearly explains in Spirit of the Liturgy is why he thinks God wants, at least for a while in the history of the Church, two different rituals to be celebrated in one rite of the Church. One r-i-t-e of the Church. You see, the definition of a "rite" within the Catholic Church is a "way of celebrating the liturgy". So different rites are ways of celebrating the Mas...

Lent is not a preparation for Easter. It's a preparation for Good Friday, the death of our Lord. When our Lord fasted forty days and forty nights in the desert, He was preparing for his inevitable death. And we - rightly following His example - we prepare for our own deaths by fasting forty days and forty nights each year. But since we don't know when our death will come, it's not enough to do tha...

Visiting Priest: Fr Philip Mackenzie, Food for the Poor   Being Christ for the other person means bringing love to the other person. The love is of course, serving others. A call to perfection, that's what it is. That your body is really a temple of the Holy Spirit. . . . The Lord is saying, let the Spirit of the law exist - not adhering to the law in its strictest sense. Because, out of the Ten C...

Jesus is speaking here about our final judgement. He's saying we have to get ready before we die. If we don't "settle our debt" before we go to our judgement - "the court" - we're in trouble. So how do we settle the debt? How do we take care of these issues, these sins, which offend God, while still here in this life? Jesus gives us the answer. He's not trying to trick or deceive us, or make the C...

What was it? What enabled Dorothy to be so willing, at such a young age, to not only consecrate herself to Christ in chastity, but also to freely throw away her life for her love for our Lord. You see, our culture (and this is not new by the way, it happens generation after generation) has this basic heresy, this idea, that the only real things are what your senses can perceive. Touch. Taste. Smel...

In this passage from Isiah, we're told that not only are there certain things we have to do, there are certain things we have to remove to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world! Oppression. False accusations. Malicious speech. You know, about a month ago I preached about gossip and it's come up several times because people keep bringing it up to me. It was one of those homilies that...

You know the old saying: a picture is worth a thousand words. An image, a picture, is able to say so much . . . when this image is an image of Jesus Christ - a holy image of Jesus Christ, or the Stations of the Cross, or the Crucifix, the Word of God - in essence, it's like reading the Bible. It's like reading the Gospel stories. There's no greater mediation that you can do. Having holy images and...

Father offers a follow-up to last week's homily on gossip.   Knowledge, truth. These are good for everyone. But data, facts, and information aren't for everyone. As parents, you know this inherently for your own children. You keep certain information away from them because it's not helpful. They're either too immature, or it's just not important. It doesn't mean that the things you know aren't tru...

Now, the sin of gossip, typically falls under the eighth commandment: thou shalt not bear false witness. technically it has to do with lying, but any type of sin in regards to your speech. What you might not know, is that the Saints and the Church Fathers tell us it also relates to the fifth commandment. Thou shalt not kill. Gossip, slander, calumny, these things are a form of murder. Obviously it...

What lead these men to Christ? It was the star. It was the sign in the sky, that God had placed there, to direct them on their journey to Truth. Each of us in our lives need some type of guiding star. Some sign - some person - to direct us to Christ. We were all lead to Christ by someone else. . . . It is the Lord's plan that a mother and a father be the first people to bring their children to Him...

This dogma of our faith that Mary is not just the Mother of Christ, She is the Mother of God Himself, is necessary for belief in Jesus Christ. It is necessarily tied to the incarnation and birth of our Savior. We are required to believe it.   It was in the plan of the Father that the Logos, the Word, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, His eternally begotten Son, would take on human flesh to...

It's a special time of the year - we have high hopes. We get together with family and friends. We give and we receive gifts. It's supposed to be a time of great joy. That makes sense not only spiritually because Christ has come into the world, but because of this opportunity to be with family. To be with friends. To reconnect with one another. But inevitably, when family gets together, tensions ca...

Joseph, after Mary, is probably the most significant Saint in the Church. That's why you see statues of Mary and Joseph in the sanctuary of Catholic Churches. This is the Holy Family. Without Joseph, this would not have happened. He had an essential role to play in the coming of the Christ. It was his job to care for Jesus' Mother and to help raise Jesus as a Child. We don't often appreciate and l...

One of Mary's most beautiful titles is "the Dawn". Mary is the dawn. Every morning before you can see the sun, you begin to see some of its light. Mary is the dawn, but Christ is the day. Mary doesn't give light to the world, but She ushers in the sun. That is Her role, that's why She is preeminent. She is the One that ushered the Son into the world not only two thousand years ago, but she continu...

Normally, when a child is conceived in the womb, the body - the body formed by the parents - cries out to God for a soul. And God creates a soul and sends it, instills it, in that newly formed body. Since the body was created in original sin by the parents who have original sin, then the soul is also tainted by original sin. This is not what happened with the Blessed Mother. Even though Her body c...