HOMILIES 2006

Sunday within the Octave of Christmas

The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph

December 31st, 2006

Feast of the Holy Family, we celebrate THIS DAY as a special day of prayer for families. It is the last day of the old year and the eve of a New Year 2007. We pray double hard for the healing of our families, especially families close to you.

I SPEAK TO YOU AS YOUR FATHER. A father who is concerned for your future well being and your faith and reverence of God. You cannot continue to live as irresponsible teenagers. Immaturity breeds immaturity, as violence breeds violence. Our modern families breed dysfunction because of the absence of responsibility.

Our society says that it is socially acceptable to be irresponsible, in a society which distorts freedom - making it acceptable to be licentious. A democratic freedom that justifies the right to do whatever I please and feel, despite its consequences. A license to use any way out, whether it is a pill, or whatever antidote - a rule of life that contradicts the moral discipline of the Ten Commandments and even the natural law itself. The Ten commandments teaches reverence of God as our first duty and responsibility and is a rule of life to protect mankind from self destruction. How many problems in our society would be solved if we practiced the ten commandments, if we practiced Christianity.

Everyone knows that there is something radically wrong with our families, with the very society we live in. Whose responsible? Whose going to fix it? Is it ever our own fault? When are we going to start to admit our failures, our responsibility?

This Feast Day of the Holy Family pray for a conversion of your hearts - a resolve for the Coming New Year.

Let us look at the scripture readings in the context of responsibility. The first reading speaks of the authority of parents over their children. Parents must never compromise their God Given responsibility. Do not give in. Parents particularly throw up their hands in desperation. Do not succumb to the attitude that “Everyone else is doing it, or a teacher says. TV morality, TV Values, TV Goals in life. TV appetites. TV solutions and satisfactions. Responsible parenthood is not giving in to every whim and desire of your children or adolescents. The Feast of the Holy Family is more a moral teaching -the first step in accepting responsibility, acknowledging your duties and the mistakes you have made by being permissive - by demanding compliance to the moral laws.

The crisis we face in the family as well as the society demands that we recognize what our fault has been and not lay it on someone else or some circumstance. For these mistakes we need to pray and repent. "I have done nothing wrong", the fact is that you have done nothing right. It remains a matter for confession. God knows what your responsibility has been and is. We need to admit it and want to change. We need less emphasis on “rights” and more on responsibility. Every right and duty carries with it a responsibility.

With the New Year, we enter into a new beginning. It is good to begin with the attitude of repentance. Reconciliation and renewal, asking God’s forgiveness and patience.

Asking forgiveness is the best and the most efficient strategy for men, for nations, for the world. Therefore every confession is a new beginning, a new challenge, the opening of a door which has been closed. We Catholics, when we bend the knees, always means and remains the sign of rising up and not falling, reverencing God and entering into a new and unknown time.

Time is always a gift of God, Our Creator. We have to know how to receive and use our gifts, and reverence our Giver. The gift of time is a challenge for everyone who looks ahead. As Christians, see the future in the promises of God. Look for the expected glory of Heaven and not in the glories of this earth and in human self glorification.

HOMILY, 33rd SUNDAY of ORDINARY TIME

November 19, 2006

Giving thanks to God on Thanksgiving Day this week may be a very important opportunity for some of us for the rest of our lives.

In two weeks we shall enter into advent time, when we look forward to Christ coming into the world in history, Christmas; "the WORD WAS MADE FLESH AND DWELT AMONGST US”.

The Scripture readings today and the Gospel talks to us about the future. It is going to get worse before it gets better. What lies ahead. Hear what God has said in the Scriptures, “that after the days of tribulations: ... the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light, the stars will be falling from the skies...”, “but that hour, no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son of God”. “Then they will see the Son of God coming in the clouds with great power and glory”. But before all that “the days of tribulation”. We also heard what the Prophet Daniel was prophesizing, about those days of tribulation, that the Archangel Michael shall be the guardian of God’s people. What does all this say to us, who say St. Michael’s Prayer after every Mass. Prepare yourselves during the Advent Season for the coming of the Son of God for Christmas and also for His Coming in Glory in our end when we shall have to give an accounting of ourselves. Protect yourselves from the anxieties and fears of those days of tribulation by your faithful prayers. Believe God’s Word.

St. Paul in his letter to the Hebrews tells us that we have the forgiveness of our sins through Jesus Christ, who died once for all. That Sacrifice of Jesus Christ is renewed by the priest with every Sacrifice of the Holy Mass. WE stand protected by reason of our faith. The great mysteries of our faith, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Eucharist, stand as the means to our salvation, that we who believe shall be protected.

The way I look at it is that I remain at peace and unafraid with the truths of my faith, with the belief that Our God who created all things and the laws of nature is a God of compassion and mercy who is determined to save us who believe in Him. So I am not afraid of the future.

Throughout history, signs and symbolic events have been given to each and every generation. Turbulent signs, events in nature, catastrophes in every time and place; these are preliminary warnings of God’s Mercy. The tragedies of the fires in California, the wars in the Middle East and terrorist threats, the scandals in our church, besides the critical shift away from God, the shift of morality away from the natural law and Christian values. And the most attempts of denying that Christ’s Birth is not a historical event and the use of His Name in Greetings. Are these not days of tribulation?

As terrible as some of these happenings have been, for us they are and can be a source of strength to declare our faith, renewing our faith and changing our lives. You cannot stop or always predict what the weather shall be. Rather than worry and speculate on what is going to happen next, if you have faith, then concern yourselves with your own lives, your prayer life. Don’t be afraid of tomorrow. If you have faith, worry about your personal and family way of life and values. Is it money, then your god may be material things, and the power of money will govern your life style. If your appetite is for the world and its excitements, and material wealth you shall be plagued with a fatalistic sense of fear and terrible anxiety; you certainly should be concerned what is going to happen tomorrow.

Advent says Christ is coming. He is our hope and our salvation. Remember always ask the Lord to send St. Michael, the Archangel to deliver you from evil.

HOMILY, 32nd SUNDAY in ORDINARY TIME

November 12, 2006

One day, Jesus was standing before the temple treasury, watching people deposit their offerings. He saw a poor widow come and put in all she had, two copper coins, which amounts to about a penny. He turned to his disciples and said, "Truly I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than the others. They all have given from their excess, but she, in her poverty, put in all she had, all she had to live on."

We might call this Sunday the "Sunday of the widows." The story of a widow was also told in the first reading, the widow of Zarephath who gave up all she had left to eat (a handful of flour and a drop of oil) to prepare a meal for the prophet Elijah.

This is a good occasion to turn our attention toward both the widows and the widowers of today. If the Bible speaks so often of widows and never of widowers, it is because in ancient society the woman who was left alone was at a greater disadvantage than the man who was left alone. Today there is no longer this difference. Actually, in general it now seems that women who are alone manage much better than men.

On this occasion I would like to talk about something that is of interest not only to widows and widowers but also to all those who are married, especially during this month in which we remember the dead. Does the death of a husband or wife, which brings about the legal end of a marriage, also bring with it the total end of the union between the two persons? Does something of that bond which so strongly united two persons on earth remain in heaven, or will all be forgotten once we have crossed the threshold of death into eternal life?

One day, some Sadducees presented Jesus with the unlikely case of a woman who was successively the wife of seven brothers, asking him whose wife she would be after the resurrection. Jesus answered: "When they rise from the dead they will neither marry nor be given in marriage but will be like angels in heaven" (Mark 12:25). Interpreting this saying of Jesus wrongly, some have claimed that marriage will have no follow-up in heaven. But with his reply Jesus is rejecting the image or idea that the Sadducees believed about heaven, as if it were going to be a simple continuation of the earthly relationship of the spouses.

Jesus does not exclude the possibility that they might rediscover in God the bond of love that united them on earth. According to this vision, marriage does not come to a complete end at death but is transfigured, spiritualized, freed from the trappings or limits that mark life on earth. And as well also the ties between parents and children or between friends. Those ties and relationships will certainly not be forgotten or erased.

In a preface for the dead our liturgy proclaims: "Life is transformed, not taken away." Even marriage, which is part of life, will be transfigured, not nullified, erased.

HOMILY, 31st SUNDAY in ORDINARY TIME

November 5, 2006

The first thing I need to remind you of are the words of Our Lord’s Gospel: to love God. That does not mean just to pray to Him. It means I want to be with Him.

Last Wednesday and Thursday were the Feasts of ALL Saints and ALL SOULS. The Feast of All Saints honors those saints who have not been formally canonized by the Church, WHEREAS the Feast day of All Souls we pray for those who are destined to be Saints, but who are yearning in purgatory to become Saints. When we die we do not die dead, we die alive. We continue in existence, a conscious life. A conscious life that remembers how we have failed Christ, how we had been unfaithful. God is Merciful but God is also just.

Jesus said " ...that it is the Will of the Father that I should not lose anything of what He Gave me, but that I should raise it up on the last day”. We belong to Christ in virtue of our Baptism and shall be raised from the dead on the last day. Just as Christ died and was raised from the dead, we, too, shall be resurrected.

We Catholic Christians await that day, living or dead. If a person is in heaven he or she do not need prayer, but if he or she is in hell then no prayers can benefit them. Belief in prayer for the dead is as old as Christianity. Inscriptions on the catacombs from the 2nd and 3rd Centuries testify to the Christian belief in prayer for the dead and what prayer for the dead would accomplish. We want for our loved ones what they yearn for; prayer for the dead for those who die in the faith of Christ who were not prepared for Heaven. They cannot help themselves, but our prayers and the prayers of the Church can be of great benefit to them.

We pray for the dead that they may soon experience sainthood, the full Glory, peace and happiness of God in heaven. We appeal to all the Saints to join us in prayer for those in purgatory, so that they who are with the Lord (because of our prayers for them) may intercede for us who are still here for a provided and peaceful death.