Lorica

Epiphany III 2024

Epiphany II 2024

Feast Of The Nativity 2023

Episode 211 - Vigil Of The Nativity 2023

Gaudete! Hail! Rejoice! This decree and command has been present for all of human history. But how does the Sunday of rejoicing fall in a season before the feast? Shouldn’t we rejoice when the wait is over? What does rejoicing really mean anyway?

Christ is King, he reigns in our age. Why are we still so restless? How long must things go on this way? And what compass will guide us through the age before the end?

We have an enemy, and he has weapons. The sharpest and most insidious of which may also be the most widely accepted and ignored in our modern day. Where is the barb that awaits us today? Into what net does he most desire us to fall? Let us be watchful as we enter this advent season.

The XXV and final Sunday of Pentecost leads us into Advent, and the preparation for Christmas. Why as we prepare to meet Our Lord are we met with apocalypse, and a warning about his dread second coming? His appearance in the manger begins the end of all ages, it is the call to stock our oil and trim our wicks. Prepare the way O Zion, your Lord is drawing near.

Brethren, be sober and vigilant. Your enemy prowls like a lion hoping to devour you. Cast not your pearls before swine. We are given admonishment and warning time and again in the Gospels. But what ought we watch for? And what must we do with this pearl of great price? A great task lies ahead of us, let us rise to meet it in the Name of the Lord.

Why bother with the Saints? Is Christ not enough? Why ask for help from anyone else? And why does St. Paul tell us to imitate himself instead?

We are not our own. We are not self-generating, self-preserving, self-directed, self-answering, not indepedent beings free from debt and obligation. Yes, we have to get along in this world. So, you know, keep your scruples, but be practical about it. Don't give in to scrupulosity, don't become an ideologue. Have some convictions. But what's really important, and what really matters, is what you ow...

The proclamation "Jesus Is Lord" not only declares Jesus of Nazareth, Mary's boy, to be eternal God, it also declares him as the fulfillment of all divinely inspired images of King and Ruler in the history of mankind going back to Adam himself.

Imagine a graph which tracks your spiritual life. There is a beginning down here, and an end, a goal up here. We imagine that the line should go straight up to the goal. That is what we want it to do, what we think it should do. But that is not what happens, ever. That is not how it works.

In [the parable of the wedding feast] there are four types of guests. Those who didn't care, and ignored the invitation. Those who cared but manifested in hatred and murder. Those from the streets, the good and the bad, who came and received, gratuitously, the robe of righteousness. And then finally, he who came, but did not put on his garment. When we read a parable like this, obviously, we want...

It's very helpful to have one calling. It makes things simple. Life seems so complex sometimes. There's so many choices, so many things tugging at us in so many directions. It's easy to get confused. We end up turning ourselves in circles, trying to decide which way to go, what to focus on. It actually creates an existential crisis, a paralysis, and certainly contributes to our anxiety, which seem...

When Jesus says "Weep not", He means trust me, do not give in to despair, do not lose hope, for I am the Resurrection and the life, and I promise to make all things new, even if for a while there will be suffering.

What we're after is security and happiness. That's what we all want, what we all desire. But in our current condition, we feel this deep insecurity, and everything we do is trying to alleviate this. God made us hungry, that we might hunger for Him. We are vulnerable beings, and God made us vulnerable that we might rely on him.

Often when one reads a passage in the Bible, the first question we ask is "what is the moral lesson here, how does this passage instruct me to live?" There is nothing wrong with asking those questions, but they are not the first, nor most important questions we should ask when seeking to understand a scriptural passage. The first and most important question is always theological. What is...

Christ came for the sick, not for the healthy. For sinners, not for the righteous. The only way we are going to experience the power of God in our lives is by seeking his mercy. And the only way we can actually, truly, deeply seek his mercy is to truly recognize our need for it.

This is what St. Peter is saying in his second epistle, which was our first reading today, where he speaks of his personal experience when he witnessed Christ's Transfiguration on Mount Tabor. As he writes St. Peter is preparing for his imminent death by crucifixion, when he will put off his tent (you remember he wanted to set up tents on the Mountain). As he prepares for his death, he recalls thi...

Episode 211 - Christmas Eve 2023

In your baptism something truly miraculous and powerful took place in your person, something wrought by the Holy Spirit which changed you indelibly. The old sinful man died, and it is completely unnatural for you to continue to behave like you are still that old man. Unnatural but possible. What happened does not function like gravity, it does not impersonally override our will and cooperation, th...

True religion is to offer the sacrifice of worship, to fast, pray, give tithes, care for the needy, abstain for sexual impurity, to conform to the family rules in mutual submission and to do it all with the right interior disposition, with true faith, humility, and love. If you do all the stuff without the right interior disposition, you have false religion. If you try to have the right interior d...

John was the greatest born of Woman, the greatest born of Eve who had become barren and cast into the wilderness because of her sin. After a long line of Adams toiling in the wilderness and the pain of childbirth- in the fullness of time, at the watershed of history, the last and greatest descendent of the old Adam was conceived of a barren woman and lived in the desert. And this man John also hap...

We so often read the gospels as moral admonitions. Which is fine, and good, but that is secondary. The gospels are about God, about Jesus Christ, revealing Him to us so that we can know and love Him as He is. The Scriptures are Christological, they reveal Jesus Christ. Take the Good Samaritan for example, people read that parable as a moral tale of how we should behave, but it is first and foremos...