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Recent posts by Theophilus:
By Theophilus on June 23rd, 2010 | Category: ParentingIt was a rough week at my parish last week.
We buried a 6-year old boy who drowned at a pool birthday party. We heard about an infant girl who died. Both of these coming on the heels of another 6-year old who died a couple of months ago. She had suffered a stroke a couple of years ago during a routine surgery and was confined to a wheelchair.
Tough stuff. “Why God?” type of stuff.
What was interesting though is that, out of the three kids, the one that struck hardest for most of the parish was the 6-year old boy who drowned. People throughout the parish were talking about him. Parents and kids either knew him or knew someone who knew him. Red ribbons went up on mailboxes throughout the community.
And I had to really try to figure it out. Why the reaction to this kid, but not the others? I didn’t know the family, and my 6-year old son didn’t know him. But, I was having the same reaction as others in my parish. It was really disturbing me and I couldn’t figure out why.
Then it came to me.
When we hear about tragedy, especially involving kids, we look for the “cause.” This tragedy happened because _________ (fill in the blank). And then we take that cause and apply it to our own lives. In most cases, we assume that we could never succumb to this cause, and so we presume that this tragedy can never befall us. It gives us a sense of comfort, no matter how false it may be. We figure whatever happened could never happen to us.
But, in cases like the 6-year old boy, the “cause” is straightforward. He was a normal, healthy 6-year old boy who attended a pool birthday party and drowned through a freak
By Theophilus on June 16th, 2010 | Category: ParentingWhat if one of your parents was an honest-to-goodness saint? Not the “my mother was a saint to put up with all of us” type of saint, but an actual canonized saint-a holy man or woman honored by the Church until the ends of time.
Columbia is the monthly magazine put out by the Knights of Columbus. This month’s issue is devoted to fathers. One of the articles has three adult children writing about their father, who just passed away on Holy Saturday at the age of 97.
The children’s names are Gianna, Pierluigi and Laura. They write glowingly about their father, Pietro.
In reading their testimonies, you can’t help but be struck by the words they used to describe their father . . . . . loving, dedicated, patient, a treasure, affectionate, strength, firmness, humility, untiring willpower, help, role model, close, generosity, enthusiasm, cultural and intellectual richness, guide, support, care, sensitivity, counsel (never imposed, always available), great example of love, constancy and faith, thirst for knowledge, inspiration, whole heart, diplomacy . . . . . .
There were two passages that especially struck me, both by Pierluigi, his son (who is 53, married, with a daughter) -
“Papa always wished to offer and model for us principles, rules and personal and religious customs that showed us how much these were at the core of his being.”
and
“He lived and passed onto us a fatherhood that was characterized by responsibility, good example, and a sense of duty. He first lived those qualities in his daily life, and dedicated himself to work, to family and to God with a deep respect for his neighbor.”
If you really read and re-read these descriptions and these passages, no other commentary is necessary. Pietro Molla’s fatherhood is a model for the rest of us. This is how Our Father
By Theophilus on April 11th, 2010 | Category: Faith & SpiritualityThe Knights of Columbus are encouraging everyone in the Church to pray a novena for the Holy Father starting today, Divine Mercy Sunday, and continuing through December 19th, the anniversary of his election to the Chair of St. Peter.
This novena is especially needed. In reviewing the news articles and the astounding poor quality of the journalism involved, it is safe to say that the ongoing attacks against the Holy Father have nothing to do with with finding justice and truth. The intent is to weaken the Holy Father and the Church; to weaken our faith. The attacks are against us faithful Catholics and our devotion to the Risen Lord and his Church here on earth.
There is a website for the novena. Pray the novena and read beyond the headlines and secular media on this story. To start, the website has several good pieces giving a more balanced view of the story.
Vivat Jesus!!
By Theophilus on March 30th, 2010 | Category: Faith & SpiritualityHas everyone thought about how they are spending Easter Triduum?
Lent officially ends on Thursday night and the Triduum begins.
Your parish should have a Mass of the Lord’s Supper on the night of Holy Thursday, which includes the washing of the feet (which my daughter especially looks forward to). Mass is followed by the procession to the Altar of Repose where prayer and adoration is usually available until midnight. This year, my parish is having a reading of the Lord’s Last Supper Discourse from the Gospel of St. John (Chapters 13-17) – a chapter on each half hour from 9:30-midnight.
Friday brings Good Friday. No Mass but every parish will have the Celebration of the Lord’s Supper around noon and also maybe in the evening. This is a day of fasting and abstinence-and not just of food. Try to fast from TV, technology and unnecessary activities. Try to take some time off from work, especially from noon-3pm. Pray the Rosary, the Divine Mercy Chaplet, and the Stations of the Cross. This year for the first time, I am taking the entire day off. God is going to have my full attention all day.
As for Holy Saturday, I used to think it was the wasted day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. This year, our pastor is encouraging us to prolong the fast and to spend the day in prayer as a sign of our waiting for Easter Sunday. I didn’t know this but the Constitution on the Liturgy, a Vatican II document, actually exhorts -
“Let the Paschal Fast be kept sacred. Let it be celebrated everywhere on Good Friday, and where possible, prolonged through Holy Saturday, so that the joys of the Sunday of the Resurrection may be attained with uplifted and clear mind.”
So, don’t make
By Theophilus on January 21st, 2010 | Category: Culture Concerns, Defending LifeYou’ve probably heard about it but it bears repeating . . .
Tomorrow (Friday), the bishops have called for a National Day of Prayer and Penance for Life to coincide with the anniversary of Roe v. Wade and the March for Life in Washington, D.C.
Our parish is having a Mass for Peace and Justice in the morning, a Rosary for Life in the afternoon, a simple meal of soup and bread for dinner, and a Holy Hour for the Unborn in the evening. After the Holy Hour, the movie Bella is going to be shown.
Check your parish website to see what Masses and devotional activities are there for you.
If you can’t make it to Mass or a parish-organized devotion, then our pastor has other suggestions:
- Make a visit to any Catholic church to spend time in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament
- Spend some extra time in prayer at home, e.g. pray a family rosary
- Abstain from meat
- Fast for the day, from a meal, or from snacks between meals
- Give up television, music, video games, or some other entertainment
- Donate monies saved from above to any pro-life group or agency
And finally, our pastor has suggested the following prayer to remember the millions of babies who have been aborted as well as those coping with and grieving the loss their aborted children
Lord God, we praise and thank You for the gift of our lives, and for the lives of all human beings. There is nothing more destructive to human life than abortion, yet we rejoice that You have conquered death by the resurrection of Your Son. Help us to do our part to end abortion – never to be silent, never to be passive, and never to be forgetful of the unborn. Give us strength to defend human life,
By Theophilus on December 14th, 2009 | Category: Faith & Spirituality, ParentingMy little girl is making her first Reconciliation tomorrow night. For some reason, she is nervous and I can’t get out of her why. I guess we all should be as nervous as we go about cleansing our souls.
In any case, last night, she and I were talking about the sacrament and its meaning. Why we do it; why Christ gave us the sacrament; why we should do it eagerly and often.
I was struggling to come up with a simple way to explain the results of the sacrament, when I came up with the following -
In our life, we have a balloon that we carry around with us. The bigger it gets, the more we are separated from God and off the path that Christ wants us to walk. The balloon only gets bigger when we sin. If we do little sins, then little puffs of air go into the balloon. If we do big sins, then bigger puffs of air shoot into the balloon.
Most of us do the little sins. We try to do good but we screw up from time to time. We forget or we give in to temptation. But even these minor sins blow air into the balloon. After a while, it’s these little puffs that have caused the balloon to grow bigger over time. All of a sudden we realize that the balloon has gotten rather large and we find ourselves separated from God.
We have to find a way to pop the balloon; but we find that we can’t do it ourselves.
The good news is that Christ has given us the Sacrament of Reconciliation. We can go to a priest and confess our sins. Sitting in the place of Christ, he will forgive our sins and pop the balloon. We are made clean and we
By Theophilus on November 18th, 2009 | Category: Faith & Spirituality, Reviews
Fr. Mark Burger is the pastor of St. John the Evangelist parish in West Chester, Ohio. He is also a renowned speaker and retreat leader. He appears annually at the Cincinnati Men’s Conference and always leaves us pondering whether we are truly listening to the voice of God that is always in our heads, even if we have hit the cerebral mute button.
Fr. Mark decided to publish a book, “Hearing God’s Voice.” We received advance notice of the book at this past Men’s Conference in March so I was looking forward to its release. He decided to self-publish it, which means some unfortunate publishing house missed out on the chance to sell people something that is going to actually enrich their souls and lead them closer to our heavenly Father.
The book is laid out as a daily meditation. Each day of the year carries a different sermon. Some are of the slap-you-across-the-face variety, while others reveal themselves to you slowly and profoundly as you mull the message over during the course of a day.
The important part of Fr. Mark’s insights is that he always tells a story. It’s not lecturing or postering-it’s just spinning a tale and then hitting home the point. It’s also ecumenical in scope. For me, it’s a great way to spend the five minutes before I walk out the door in the morning. I find myself reflecting on the story during my ride into work.
A good example is today’s reflection for November 18th. Fr. Mark tells the story of a friend who gave him a prayer to bring someone peace in troubled times. After relaying the prayer, Fr. Mark concludes by sharing
By Theophilus on October 20th, 2009 | Category: Faith & Spirituality, Reviews If you do nothing else productive today, read Ecclesia Semper Reformanda – The Church is Always in Need of Renewal. It is the first pastoral letter from Bishop Nickless of the Diocese of Sioux City, Iowa. It’s only 14 pages long and is an easy read, but it contains so many “wow” moments that I kept reading passages again and again.
Bishop Nickless was ordained in 1973, so he was a newby when the Church was beginning to implement Vatican II and has a great perspective on the past forty years of the Church. In his pastoral letter, he discusses Vatican II and the good and the bad of its implementation. He discusses where it has led us and where we need to go from here. By the end of the letter, you will be fully aware of what is means to be Catholic and what you are called to do.
For me, the high point of the letter is where he talks about the Eucharist (starts at the bottom of page 5). I just wish a priest had said something like this to me twenty years ago.
The only thing better for this letter would be if it was signed by the head of every diocese in the Church.
By Theophilus on October 7th, 2009 | Category: Faith & SpiritualityToday is the feast day for Our Lady of the Rosary.
As such, I would like to issue the 20 Decade Challenge.
Pray all 20 decades of the Holy Rosary today – the Joyful, Luminous, Sorrowful and Glorious Mysteries. Pray one set in the morning, one at lunch, one at the end of the workday and one before bed (or anyway you can piece together about an hour of your day).
Offer each decade for a specific intention. Some intentions may include: the Holy Father and his intentions – peace in the world – the Church, our priests and deacons, our bishops, vocations, our fellow parishioners – our spouses, children, godchildren, young people in our lives, parents and family members, coworkers, teachers – the unborn, the end to abortion – our nation, our troops, our political leaders – the unemployed and those suffering economically, those suffering from personal and physical distress – those of other faiths, those who have fallen away from the Church – those who have died and those who mourn their loss, those who have died in natural disasters or accidents – the victims of violence, the victims of our culture – repentance for our sins, conversion of sinners and the souls in purgatory – or whatever or whomever else for which we wish to pray.
There is no shortage of things needing our prayers and the Holy Rosary is prayer on steriods. It’s a direct call to the Blessed Virgin Mary and her beloved Son. The Holy Rosary is a powerful weapon against all that ails our world, especially those things caused by man that erode human dignity.
Take the 20 Decade Challenge. Let our Holy Mother hear a multitude of voices today.
By Theophilus on September 23rd, 2009 | Category: ReviewsLast weekend was an incredibly grace filled weekend of movies for me. As today is “Hump Day,” you may want to look at these DVDs as you turn your attention to what you are going to do this weekend.
A week ago Sunday, our homily was on William Wilberforce, a British legislator, who combated the slave trade at the turn of the 19th Century. I had read Amazing Grace, a book about his life and efforts, but I had never seen the movie. So, I stopped into Blockbuster last week and found it. While I walked out, I noticed the recent movie about Pope John Paul II, starring Jon Voight and Cary Elwes, so I picked that one up as well. While watching Amazing Grace on Friday night, we saw a preview for The Ultimate Gift, which looked promising. So on Saturday, I picked this movie up. We watched The Ultimate Gift on Saturday night; and I finished up my movie weekend by watching Pope John Paul II on Sunday.
So, in one weekend, I saw a movie (Amazing Grace) about a man who started an effort almost single-handedly that ended up transforming the world. It took him 20 years to do it but he succeeded in ending the slave trade and ultimately slavery in the British Empire – without a shot being fired.
Then I watched a surprisingly humorous movie (The Ultimate Gift) highlighting the gifts we are all given, most important of which may be forgiveness, redemption, and mercy. But we all know that the Ultimate Gift is love and this movie reminds us how multi-layered this gift is in our lives and how often we reject it. Watch the movie and find out for yourself.
Finally, I ended the weekend watching a movie (Pope John
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