Forced Love Is Not Love
So wouldn’t it be easier if Juliet forced Romeo to love him? Then, none of that heartbreak would’ve happened. So what if Jim from “The Office” forced Pam to love him in the first season? Then, none of that drama or heartbreak would’ve happened. The answer is no. Because forced love is not love. In the Gospel for this Sunday, Jesus is tempted by Satan to throw himself down, to reveal his glory, to reveal his divinity to the…
Dump The Garbage
Do you know who the unsung heroes of our society are? Garbage men. They do everything that we do not want to do. Garbage men and women, we salute you. In the gospel for this Sunday, Jesus speaks about Gehenna. Gehenna also means hell. But Jesus uses the word Gehenna because Gehenna was the area of Jerusalem that was the garbage dump, and Jews were not allowed to go there. Jesus is…
Serenity Prayer
“The Serenity Prayer” is the common name for a prayer written by the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, born in 1892. Niebuhr, who first wrote the prayer for a sermon at Heath Evangelical Union Church in Heath, Massachusetts, used it widely in sermons as early as 1934 and first published it in 1951 in a magazine column. The prayer spread through Niebuhr’s sermons and church groups in the 1930s and 1940s, and was adopted and popularized by Alcoholics Anonymous and other twelve-step programs.
The Supreme Gift
I don’t know if you’re like me, but every time I see a baby, I only want to hold and squeeze it because it’s so cute. Maybe that makes me weird. What this is called is the positive feedback loop. When we hold or care for an infant child, it releases oxytocin. It’s written in our biology that babies are cute. The gospel for this Sunday is intense, but it is all about the preciousness of children, and the Catholic…
Jesus’ Second Coming
Okay, so it is time to build those fallout shelters. It is time to build those panic rooms. It is time to hoard that toilet paper because the world’s end is coming. In all of the readings, this is what Jesus is talking about. He’s talking about the world’s end for Jesus’s second coming. And the fantastic thing is we don’t have to be afraid. Jesus first came in humility, poverty, and weakness, coming in a manger…
Trinity Sunday
“My Life with the Walter Boys,” “Vampire Diaries,” “Twilight,” “Stranger Things,” and “Outer Banks,” what do all of these things have in common? Love triangles. And not the most wholesome love triangles. Today, we celebrate the solemnity of the most blessed Trinity, the most perfect, epic love triangle, the love relationship between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. This is what…