Saint + Elizabeth + Ann + Seton + Parish

Where does your mind spend most of its time? Tearing yourself apart worrying about the woes and troubles of the world — and there are certainly enough of them to strangle yourself in worry — or reinforcing hope and strength and virtue by focusing on whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise?Download Transcript

In the scheme of things in your life and in my life, where is God located? In the things going on in your life, as we are trying to balance a lot of things in life: our life’s ambitions, our life’s dreams. Where is God located? 

The first lie and the first sin were the same: to deny the dignity of woman and man as human beings, to betray their worth as created by God and breathing the very breath of God, to diminish their meaning as persons fashioned by God’s hands.Download Transcript

You know the good news? The Lord’s vineyard is not a gated vineyard. It’s an open vineyard. And so when you change your mind at 4 pm and you want to go into the vineyard, come on in! You change your mind at 6 pm, come on in! Because his mercy is open. His invitation is open. 

Those who started to work early and worked all day were paid the promised day’s wage. Those who worked half a day were paid a day’s wage. Those who worked the last hour of the day were paid a day’s wage. That is the mercy of God. No matter when we turn to him––as a child or as an older adult––there is full forgiveness and the gift of eternal life.Download Transcript

What does ‘Mass’ mean? It comes to us from the very charge we’re given at the end of Mass: Ite, missa est. It’s the past participle of ‘to be sent.’ It’s to remind us of that service aspect–that what we do here continues out there. It cannot be contained within walls, just as He could not be contained. 

 Jesus chose … to be related to all of us who bear His name in baptism by water and the Holy Spirit. That’s His family.

One of the difficulties with our mission as Christians in the world is understanding how I, as a frail, broken, repetitive sinner, can ever be a witness to the goodness of God. And how can I instruct another to turn away from sins which I myself have committed, perhaps recently? How can I do that? 

One fundamental question that people who study love and relationships try to answer is why relationships break down. Regardless of what explanation somebody has as to why relationships break down, there is something at least we can all agree about: Relationships can be nourished and broken relationships can be healed. 

Sin makes us small—it focuses on our smallness: our small wants, our small desires and passions, a small world we construct around ourselves. Grace connects us to God’s majesty in the vast universe. It enlarges us, teaches us to have an outsized hope. Sin arises from small thoughts and ambitions—me! me!—but grace opens our visions to vast horizons, all touched with the grandeur of God.Download Transcript

You and I are together for three nights. So I thought we would look at that Man in the tomb with us for 40 hours in three ways. Tonight: Jesus of Nazareth—God made man, a human being who walked our dust and died our death. Tomorrow: Jesus Christ, the Church. And finally, then, on Tuesday night, Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, the Blessed Sacrament. 

We’d like to believe God will never ask of us anything that is unpleasant. The witness of the Scriptures and the Faith proclaimed by the Church tell us that is not true. Paul gives the contrast in his letter to the Romans: offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God…. Do not conform yourselves to this age, but be transformed…. Jesus tells us that true life comes through dying to the old life. It’s the message of the cross.Download Transcript

 A few years ago when I was teaching at Catholic University in Washington, DC, I overhead two college students walking across campus. One asked the other to pray for him because he was going through a rough time. Astonishingly, the second student stopped, turned toward his friend, made the sign of the cross and began to pray for him right then and there. Why not? Did you do that this week? Hearing the troubles of the world, did you stop and pray right then and there? ‘Lord, help our troubled world; heal our divided hearts. Turn hatred and mistrust to compassion. Amen’ — That’s all it takes. In the middle of the office, the neighborhood, the family room. Pray. Here and now.Download Transcript

Morning by morning, week by week, minute by minute, second by second, January to December, day in, day out, God is faithful to you and God is faithful to me. 

For us as Christians and Catholics, the culture of welcoming is not a public relations strategy. It is not a marketing strategy. It is something that comes right from the heart of our vocation as Christians. 

Nature is alive and growing, and God’s grace sustains it. And so the Church chooses green as the color for Ordinary Time. Color reaches into our senses every bit as much as music or art or architecture, or the poetry of liturgical language–because prayer involves every part of the human person.Download Transcript

The disobedience of Adam marks all people; the obedience of Christ marks those who embrace the Second Adam. When we follow Jesus Christ we are lifted up from the bondage of sin so we can wing our way to heaven.Download Transcript

It became clear to me—through worshiping and praying in other congregations—that they may be very, very good at talking about Jesus and singing about Jesus, but it was only in a Catholic Mass that I had the clear impression that we were not talking about the Lord, we were talking with the Lord, who was truly present in our midst. 

Between the three Persons of the Divine Trinity, which we call Father, Son, and Spirit, there exists love so real that it took on the form of another Person. The Father so filled with love that the Son was generated by pure love. The Son looking back on the Father and so filled with love for the Father and the Father for the Son that their love became real and became the third Person of the Blessed Trinity.

A mystery is not something we cannot ever understand. That’s not what a mystery is. A mystery is a truth that we need revelation to help us understand.