Lorica

The mother of Jesus said to Him, “They have no wine.” Jesus does not respond, there is only silence and yet there is so much for us to lean in that space of silence. Her confidence, her trust and faith ring out in the silence. In the empty pause when the Word did not speak - the Woman without much ado confidently gives a command that has echoed throughout the ages. With this command and her fiat s...

The family becomes a true reflection of the divine society only in as much as they flourish in the Church, otherwise they can become a stumbling block to salvation. Jesus makes it clear in this story that his earthly mother has no rights over him which are at odds with His heavenly Father. The family is a sacramental union of divine life but only if it is subservient to the Church, to the Family o...

Typically when a husband and wife have a baby they have the privilege to choose a name for their child. In the case of the naming of Mary’s baby things went a little different than usual. As far as I am aware this is the only known case in history where the baby… actually named himself.

What a glorious faith we have that mocks the fruitless foe that can do nothing to hurt God’s children; the more we are assailed the more we are blessed who trust in God if only we become like these innocent babes.

This is the irony of it. The immaterial God who cannot be seen has made himself known by becoming a man. In olden times he manifest himself in fire, smoke, or a burning bush, He hid in the rock and behind a thick curtain. But now he comes and is, Jesus of Nazareth, Mary’s boy. And yet- while He makes himself so very accessible and vulnerable he becomes more hidden. His manifestation in the flesh b...

“For while all things were in quiet silence, and the night was in the midst of her course, Thy almighty word leapt down from heaven from Thy royal Throne, as a fierce conqueror into the midst of the land of destruction.”

There is only one power and force in this world which can keep me from being close to Jesus and that is me. And I know what I must do. I must stop looking for someone to blame. I must stop looking to temporal things to make me happy, I must repent.

We are still in Babylon preparing to enter the eternal city. The sooner we embrace this reality the sooner we can find Christ in the midst, the sooner we can experience the comfort of the comforter.

Maranatha! is the bold cry of the Christian who is ready and desirous of the coming of the Lord. Why bold? Because he knows full well that that coming means judgment, but his conscience is clean, he is ready and anxious for the judgment because for those who love God the judgments means eternal joy, final deliverance, absolute perfection. The early Christians did not utter Maranatha with a tepid w...

The Penitential fasting season of Advent (not as severe as Lent) uses the theme of the second coming and calls for repentance to prepare the soil of our hearts to fully embrace the seed of Christmas joy. We cannot fully embrace the holy babe if we do not adequately fear the judgment.

The forgiveness of God is not simply a general attitude of mercy toward us. It is our very real and actual redemption. Can we say God forgives all, yet not all are saved or is it more accurate to say, God has an attitude of mercy and forgiveness towards all but not all are forgiven and redeemed. Our parable helps us to understand why not all are forgiven their debt.

Both the Centurion and the Nobleman had faith in Jesus. The difference is the centurions faith was perfect and mature and relied solely on the Word of Jesus, the nobleman’s faith was imperfect and weak and required a sign. When Jesus rebukes the nobleman’s faith and refuses to come he is disciplining the nobleman and doing what is needed to perfect his faith.

If someone asks you why we pray for the departed- ask them why do we pray for anyone? God knows what we need, He does not need us to inform him. Jesus is the Mediator, Jesus finished the work, Jesus is our intercessor, He doesn’t need us to pray. Why pray at all?

Johns prophecy to the first Christians is that while apostate Israel will be destroyed- they will survive, they will not go down with old Israel, they will emerge as the remnant, they will endure the coming persecution and tribulation and it will become clear that they are the true Israel the perfected Israel of which the former was a type and a shadow.

When He Ascended into Heaven accompanied by the Angelic Host trumpeting His return to majesty as the glorified God-man the conqueror of death and reconciler of creation. He entered into the Heavenly tabernacle and presented before God the Father a new Humanity, Holy and Blameless and he said: “Here am I and the children whom God has given Me.”

And because we know and we believe we must speak, we must respond to the Word we have received. We have a voice, the Logos has been put into our mouths from the knowledge of the voice and we must bear witness, we must speak the truth to the world and back to God in praises.

If we think of our creation as God throwing us into existence and thus propelling us toward a goal the image is not of God throwing a ball-- but a boomerang. The Divinely caused trajectory of our existence is meant to be an arc which comes back to the source. We who came forth from God must return to God.

Love God and Love Neighbor this is everything. This love is manifest thru worship. Worship is the offering of sacrifice which we associate with the direct worship of God but may not realize that the sacrificial deeds we do on the behalf of our neighbor are accounted as sacrifices offered to God and they are pleasing and acceptable to Him. Our good deeds, our love of neighbor are part of our worshi...

When man became his own god and started fabricating rules the rules he made destroyed love. And this is the constant challenge that Jesus runs into with the Pharisees and lawyers. Their rules are tyrannous and love depleting. God’s rules are life giving and love building. It is not a matter of rules or no rules. Of law being bad and lawlessness being good. The problem is the source and the inner m...

We honor the great warrior Archangel this day and celebrate his mighty defeat of Satan, if we want St. Michael to be our friend and defender we must become like a child seated on the lap of Christ. This is how we will make his victory our own and the angels will fight for us and bring us to Christ through all the dangers and snares of this world.

There is only one way, one door, to finding life, to becoming truly human and that is to be willingly joined to Jesus Christ upon His cross. God has shown us how to live, how to be a human being, we have seen it with our eyes when we have seen him hanging upon that cross. When we see how God has chosen to die we have seen what it means to live.

What are you going to do? You- no one else, you what will YOU do? Will you become a human being? Will you turn yourself toward the light of your being and fulfill that deep hunger and longing to be the fullness of what you were given in your creation?

Our Lords passion, his suffering and sorrow is his embrace of us in our grief- and thus his embrace of our grief- this is His love for us. He first love us in this way so that we might be able to Love Him in the same way. He enters our grief so that we might enter Gethsemane and pray with Him, so that we might stand at the foot of the cross and die with him, this is how we will also live with him....

Mary is not a doctrine to be figured out or explicated. She is not a conundrum, she is not a concept or abstract philosophical theory to resolve. The Blessed Mary is the Woman who bore the God Man, she is His Mother, she is our Mother- she is a person- She is a person we can know, you don’t solve a person, you know and love a person.

Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.