Pastoral Message

You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light… In our country today, nearly every event (whether tragic, joyful, natural or manmade), is seized upon as a political event. Folks from “both sides of the aisle” quickly line up to blindly express extreme views in an attempt to capitalize on the event to support their agendas. Often, their blindness prevents them from truly seeing the circumstances or the impact on the people that

You might have heard it said that a picture is worth a 1000 words. Well, here are a lot fewer words from me and some pictures from the Confirmation Year 2 retreat! The Sacrament of Confirmation will be conferred on these young folks just a few weeks after Easter. Take it from me, these young men and women are fine! We need to encourage them with our words and prayers. Pray that as they receive the gift of the Holy Spirit

It is good that we are here! One of my favorite people in the New Testament is Peter. He reminds me so much of the people that I grew up with in New York. They were always ready with a comment, or an observation, or a complaint, or an opinion. Being quiet simply was not an option. Occasionally they might say something brilliant. Often, they said things that were offensive or just plain stupid. Peter fits that pattern perfectly. In Matthew’s Gospel,

Happy Lent Y’all! Sometimes when I’m feeling a need for humility, I’ll look up what I think to be a simple concept on my favorite giant-headed website – the online version of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries). Since Lent is a season to embrace humility, I typed in the word “sin” as a search subject. Wow! I can’t think of any other three-lettered word that could generate so lengthy a definition. The Stanford Encyclopedia article on sin went on for

So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect. Today’s Gospel passage is the conclusion of Chapter 5 of Matthew’s Gospel, which is known as The Sermon on the Mount. This chapter contains some of the most direct, and hardest to follow, teachings of Jesus. In each section of this chapter, Jesus challenges His followers (and, of course, all of us) to reject sin and to become the beautiful, loving people that God originally created. It begins with the list

You are the light of the world…your light must shine before others. In 1988, President George H. W. Bush described his vision for an engaged and generous society in this way: “For we are a nation of communities…all of them varied, voluntary and unique…a brilliant diversity spread like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky.” He was encouraging a spirit of volunteerism that, if embraced by all, would replace the expensive and often ineffective efforts

In our Gospel today, we’re reminded of a very familiar pericope (fyi., a pericope is a literary/rhetorical term that means a passage, often from the Bible, that forms a unit of thought). If you’ve been hanging around Church for a while, we’ve all heard preachers eloquently waxing on about this pericope, Matthew 5:1-12. Preachers focus on being “poor of spirit,” being meek, hungering for righteousness, etc. – really those virtuous qualities Christians should embrace. Other times, usually at funerals, a preacher would

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Today is Word of God Sunday. The Church asks us to focus particularly on the essential importance of God’s Word in our worship and in our everyday lives. There was a time when Non-Catholic Christians accused Catholics of not reading the Bible. To some extent, they may have had a point. However, the Second Vatican Council focused Catholic worship in a very clear and

Hey Y’all When I was a kid - a kid who bore the name “Reynold” - I wondered if I would be any different if my name was Mike, or John, or Biff, or Ringo (remember I was a kid in the early 70’s). While I could fantasize about who I might be if I had had a different name, I realized in truth and in fact, that I am me, and I’m called Reynold. I was always going to be

Today, we celebrate the feast of the Epiphany. As we hear in the Gospel, this feast commemorates the day on which the Magi from the East came seeking the infant Jesus, to bring Him gifts, and to pay Him homage. The term “Magi” referred to learned (or “wise”) men who studied the stars (practicing what today we call astrology) and probably performed some types of magic. It is unlikely that the men were kings or that there were exactly three