The Catechism in a Year – Day 117 – The Church is Catholic

We continue our examination of the four marks of the Church with today’s mark: catholic. Fr. Mike explains that “catholic” means that the Church is universal in two senses. The first is that Christ is fully present in her, and so receives the fullness of the means of salvation. Second, it goes out to all peoples; everyone belongs. Today’s readings from the Catechism are paragraphs 830-838.

Click on link to play video: https://youtu.be/3enRAXivMvU


The Catechism in a Year – Day 114 – The Church Is One

In this new paragraph—”The Church is One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic”—the Catechism explains how and why the Church is “One”. Fr. Mike highlights the many manifestations of the good that Jesus works through the Church, and he also urges us to cling to the “visible bonds of unity” that Christ offers us. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 811-816.

Click on the link to play video: https://youtu.be/QbmMpHZ0vME


Sermon Notes – March 5, 2023 – Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places?

Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places?

Father Peter Fitzgibbons

March 4 – 5, 2023

Gospel: Matthew 17:1-9

The last part of the Gospel says that the devil went away. In another part of the Gospel, it says that the devil will wait for another occasion. And that’s true. When we resist his temptations, he goes away and waits for another opportunity. The devil did it to our Lord, and he will do it to us. However, with the Lord, we can be victorious over our sins. But the devil is cunning, powerful, and patient. He will wait for another opportunity, and it will come. The prime opportunity for the devil’s temptations is when we are hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. During those times, we tend to make poor decisions. Our will is already weakened by original and repeated sin. So, he just waits for us. He also waits for pride. “Hey, I’m not like those little people. I’m very, very good. I don’t do that anymore.” Really?

We have to be careful during those times when we are most vulnerable. When we are hungry, angry, lonely, or tired, our will and our body are weakened. You can set that to a country music song by Johnny Lee: “Looking for Love in all the Wrong Places” which includes people, places, and things. “Oh, Father, computers and phones are great!” Yeah. They are a source of temptation for me. You should hear the words I say in my office about my computer. I have a backup phone which I also had words with this morning. I have no idea how to use it. Basically, I have a phone anchor.

Do you know where the biggest potential for sin is located? It sits on our shoulders. You can avoid certain things, but everything is inside our brains. We tend to forget what we’ve been taught in school but can remember every bad joke we’ve heard and every bad picture we’ve seen. It’s all in our brains. What goes in stays forever like all those electronic messages we send. They exist forever. You may wipe them off your phone, but they are out there.

We have to remember how weak we are. The devil plays on our pride just as he played on the pride of Adam and Eve. We feel very good about ourselves when we can drive all day without using any Italian hand gestures to people or commenting on someone’s ancestry who is driving erratically on the highway. “I didn’t flip that idiot off even though he needed it.” “I’ve done really good. I’ve avoided this and I’ve avoided that.” When I was a young soldier, I saw a World War II Army training film. The film was about broken shoelaces. It’s not the big things that will get you killed. . . it’s the small things. We do okay with major calamities but it’s the small things that trip us up. It’s our broken weakness. “Oh, I’m too old to commit that sin.” There are other sins. Trust me. There are a lot of sins out there, and you’d be surprised about the sins and depravity of old people. As Saint Peter recorded in his epistle on admonition, “Keep sober and alert, because your enemy the devil is on the prowl like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour” (Peter 5:8).

Our will and intellect have been weakened by original sin and sins committed since our baptism. However, the innocence we have lost can be regained, and that’s what we try to do every day and especially during this Lenten season. We can regain our innocence by fasting, abstinence, almsgiving, and prayer. What does almsgiving do? It covers a multitude of sins. Saint James said, “anyone who can bring back a sinner from his erring ways will be saving his soul from death and covering over many a sin” (James 5:20). Those are the things we are called to do. That’s how we grow in virtue and regain what we have lost through sin. Will our intellect be perfect again? No, not until Heaven. But we have to be vigilant about temptation because the devil is always out there and waiting. While you are pious by being here in church, he’s outside doing pushups and chin-ups. He’s waiting for us. Right now, he may be wondering when Father is going to shut up. And I agree with that. Sometimes I go on longer than usual.

Always be vigilant. And do not ever, ever think, “Oh my God! We are so unpowerful.” when we have the greatest Power in the world ready to help us. Remember, in the face of temptation, the first thing we should do is run away from it. Don’t walk into a mine field if you don’t have to. The second thing to do is retrace your steps and get the heck out of there. And the final and most important step is to pray.

How will you apply this message to your life? ________________________________________

You can read all of Father Fitzgibbons’ sermons by going to annunciationcatholicalbemarle.com and clicking on “Blog” then “Categories” then “Sermon Notes.” On a cell phone: click on “Blog” then “Menu” and then “Categories.” Sermon Notes are also available on the church Facebook page at facebook.com/ola.catholic.church. Click on “Groups” and then “Sermon Notes.”


Sermon Notes – February 12, 2023 – “Maximizing the Minimum”

“Maximizing the Minimum”

Father Peter Fitzgibbons

February 11 – 12, 2023

Gospel:   Matthew 5:17-37

I have known you all for a long time, and I am willing to bet that I could ask anyone in this congregation to stand and recite all Ten Commandments.  I believe you could do that.  However, memorizing them is easy but keeping them is quite another matter.  The Ten Commandments are like the “I will obeys.”  But they are more than just ten sentences.  As our Lord tells us in the Gospels, they go a little deeper than that.  If you look at the Baltimore Catechism which is the one I used growing up in Catholic school, the Commandments are more than “Thou shall not” do this and “Thou shall not” do that.  Our Lord expanded on this in the Gospels.  There are things you shouldn’t do but there are also things you should do.  We use the Commandments as a yardstick to measure our sanctity and how close we are drawing to our Lord.  And that’s a very good beginning.  But it’s not the end in the walk of sanctity. 

Ash Wednesday is next week.  If you say, “I’m going to eat better,” well eating better is not a penance . . . except for me, but anyway.  It’s actually part of the Fifth Commandment.  If something is covered by a Commandment, it’s not a penance.  Sometimes we think those are the standards we have to live by.   A priest who I’m familiar with said, “I said the Divine Office and also the Rosary.  Oh my God, I’ve done so much!”  Really Father?  You need a break and a raise!  Come down from the cross, Father; we need the wood.  Priests have been given much and therefore are responsible for more.  You’ve done what you were supposed to do.  “Father, I’ve been a good Catholic – I haven’t robbed a bank.”  You are not supposed to!  I didn’t see that anywhere in the Commandments!  We tend to maximize the minimum.   We say, “Hey, I’m a good person.”  By the way, that statement is not found in Scripture.  “I keep the Commandments.”  What does scripture tell us?  Saint Luke’s Gospel, Chapter 17, Verse 10 says: “I am a useless servant.  I have only done what I’ve been told to do.”   We are no better than the servants because we’ve done only what we’ve been told to do. 

This is not to denigrate the Commandments.  The Commandments are good because they are directions from our Lord.  They teach us how to love.  They are like the New Jersey barriers on the highway.  Jesus said that they are not works of justice.   People get upset and say, “Oh, the Commandments are about judgement!”   No, they’re not.  What’s wrong with you?  What have you done?  When people start yelling at the Church, I always wonder what they have done.  If you’ve done something really wrong and your conscience is hurting, come see me.  I can fix that.  Keeping the Commandments are works of love.  That’s what our Lord said: “If you love Me, keep my Commandments.” Don’t rewrite them.  And don’t say they need to be updated.   “Keep My Commandments through works of love.  Renounce your very self and follow Me in whatever way I need you, in whatever vocation I need you, in whatever path I need you, and in whatever cross I ask you to carry.  Resign yourself to My will and become with Me a co-redeemer for the salvation of souls”. 

Our Lord said, “If you love Me, keep My commandments.”  There are more than ten by the way.  They not only teach us but help us to prepare our souls to go further in God’s love.  Remember our Lord and the rich young man?   He approached the Lord and asked, “Lord, what must I do to inherit everlasting life?”   Our Lord said, “Keep My Commandments.”  The young man said, “I have kept Commandments since my youth.”  And our Lord looked at him with great love and said, “Sell everything you have or give it to the poor and follow Me.”  The young man went away saddened because he had many possessions.  The greatest possession he had and was unwilling to give was himself.  

That’s what the Commandments train us to do.   They ask us to renounce ourselves.  So that, as Saint Paul says, “we can become co-redemptorists for the salvation of souls.”  To accept from His hand, lovingly and not always happily, whatever vocation He has asked to us to do in a time or place.  To accept any cross He asks us to carry for ourselves or those others have imposed upon us.  To be like Him for the salvation of souls.  This is what the Commandments train us to do.  The works of love He asks us to do lead us to the renunciation of self.   “You know better what is good for my salvation, the salvation of those I love, and the salvation of the world, so I resign myself to You.”  When you resign yourself to the good Lord, a couple of things are important to know.  First, you don’t have to understand everything.  Who knows the mind of the Lord or His counsellor?   We don’t know.  And the most important part for us because of our fallen intellect and will is that we don’t have to like it.  When I was sick that month with Covid, I tried to come over to the church to walk while saying my prayers.  That didn’t work out so well.  I may have made it around the church once or twice and decided to sit down for a while.  I felt worse than I looked.  When I finally went back to work at the VA, one of the nurses in hospice said, “Father, you don’t look good.”  You ought to be inside!   Some friends of mine wouldn’t bring the drug cart down when I needed it.  Come on!  I’m hurting here!  Did I like the suffering I was going through?  No.  Did I enjoy it?  No.  Did anyone around me enjoy it?  Heck no!   I was only spreading the joy.  Did I accept it for the suffering of souls?  Yes.  I offered it up to Christ for my sins and for the salvation of souls.  I did not like it but it was necessary.  It was a good lesson in the virtue of humility. 

Keeping the Commandments is only the first phase of love, but they lead us to the last one which is renunciation of self.  Know what the hardest thing to do in the religious life of priests?  “The vow of poverty?”  No, not really.  That’s nothing.  It is doing the will of another rather than your own.  The hardest vow I took at ordination is obedience.  And that’s true not only for me but for all of us.  Anyone who has been in the service will tell you that we put people through arduous tasks.  “I cannot do it First Sergeant!”   You will with proper boot therapy.  Boot or Kiwi therapy is a great motivator.  We know you can do it.  Our doctors are not stupid.  You don’t want to do it.  We are just checking your heart. 

The only thing hard about the spiritual life is what sits on top of our shoulders.  It’s the greatest source for temptation.  Our Lord does not give us impossible tasks.   He checks our hearts for how much we love Him.  That’s what He asks: ”How much do you love Me?”   Say to any hero or heroine, “You did great!”   And they will say, “No.  I’m just one of the herd. This is what I do.”   They do it out of love.  That is what our Lord is asking from us.  Keep the Commandments.  Keep these works of love.  They are guides and training aids so that we may come to fuller and greater love, renounce ourselves, and accept our crosses and our ordinations.  They help us become what we were meant to become . . . co-redeemers with Christ.  And when God asks us to do something, if we love Him we will say, “Whatever Your will Lord.  Let Your will be done rather than mine.”

Father’s Reflections . . .

A part of my past life comes back to haunt me from time to time.  When you are listening to newscasters and so-called experts about international events like our latest balloon festival…I don’t believe them.  The military commentators should begin with “Once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away.”  I went to the same charm school as the military commentators.  They tell you nothing because they can’t.  Everything they would tell you is classified, and classifications have at least a 50-year life span.  So, everything you hear is basically fertilizer.  They aren’t telling you anything that’s not public knowledge.

How will you apply this message to your life? ________________________________________

You can read all of Father Fitzgibbons’ sermons by going to annunciationcatholicalbemarle.com and clicking on “Blog” then “Categories” then “Sermon Notes.”  On a cell phone: click on “Blog” then “Menu” and then “Categories.”  Sermon Notes are also available on the church Facebook page at facebook.com/ola.catholic.church.  Click on “Groups” and then “Sermon Notes.”


Morning Offering – The Catholic Church is One Body with Many Members

“Just as in one man there is one soul and one body, yet many members; even so the Catholic Church is one body, having many members. The soul that quickens this body is the Holy Spirit; and therefore in the Creed after confessing our belief in the Holy Spirit, we are bid to believe in the Holy Catholic Church.”
— St. Thomas Aquinas

//Catholic Company//


Why do Catholics Have a Longer Bible?

Have you noticed that the Catholic Bible has more books than the Protestant version?

It’s true. We do have a longer Bible, with seven more books, because we use a different translation. While our Protestant brothers and sisters’ Bible is based on the Hebrew translation, we use the Greek translation, known as the Septuagint, which includes more books.

Many Protestants say that their version is the correct one and is not “missing books.” They have several arguments for this. One of the arguments claims that there were “400 Silent Years” between the time of Malachi (their last book) and the time of Jesus. In other words, they say that there were no divinely-inspired prophetic utterances during this period.

In his book, The Bible Is A Catholic Book, Catholic Answers apologist Jimmy Akin explains what’s wrong with this argument. First, he says, there’s no evidence that all of the books of the Old Testament were written before 400 B.C. Jimmy also says that, while each book of the Bible is divinely inspired, a writer did not have to be an official prophet to pen a divinely-inspired book:

While all of the biblical authors were divinely inspired, this didn’t mean that they functioned in society as prophets. Psalms and Proverbs attribute many passages to David and Solomon, but they were kings, not prophets. The truth is, we don’t know who wrote many Old Testament books, including all the historical ones (Joshua to 2 Chronicles), and it’s just supposition to claim that they were written by prophets. We also have no evidence that New Testament authors like Mark and Luke ever received prophetic revelations.

While there may not have been any prophets between the time of Malachi and Jesus, that doesn’t mean that God didn’t give any revelations to the writers of the remaining books in the Old Testament, which is just one of the reasons why the Catholic Church recognizes that these additional books are also divinely inspired.

//The Catholic Company//


Why are We Catholic AND Christian?

Have you ever wondered how we became known as “Catholics” and “Christians”?

Before they were called Christians or Catholics, Jesus’ earliest disciples were known as “People of the Way.” This is likely because Jesus called Himself “the way, the truth, and the light” (John 14:6). Many names were used to describe the followers of Jesus in the early days before the term “Christians” stuck.

Acts Chapter 9, the story of St. Paul’s conversion, says, “But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest, and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way… he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.”

Later, the “People of the Way” would come to be universally known as “Christians.” The name “Christian” comes from the Greek word Christianos, which means “Follower of Christ.”

So how did Christians become known as “Catholics”?

The Greek word for “church” is katholikos, which translates to “universal.” The word “catholic” comes from katholikos. Since the true Church is universal, “making disciples of all nations” as Jesus commanded (Matthew 28:19), the precise wording “Catholic Church” is fitting. It simply affirms that she is the “Universal Church,” the true Church established by Christ.

So, we are “Christians”—those who follow Christ—and we are also “Catholic,” that is, members of the one universal and undivided Church united throughout the whole world thanks to the evangelization of the Apostles and their successors.

//The Catholic Company//