“I place trust in God, my creator, in all things; I love Him with all my heart.”
— St. Joan of Arc
//The Catholic Company//
Morning Offering – I Place Trust in God, My Creator
Morning Offering – How Much Longer do You Wish to be Stingy With Jesus?
“Oh, my soul, how much longer do you wish to be so stingy with Jesus? Why so negligent towards Jesus who made You? Why so lazy towards Jesus who redeemed you? Who do you want to love, if you do not want to love Jesus?”
— St. Gemma Galgani
//The Catholic Company//
Morning Offering – Love Mary!
“Love Mary! She is loveable, faithful, constant. She will never let herself be outdone in love, but will ever remain supreme. If you are in danger, she will hasten to free you. If you are troubled, she will console you. If you are sick, she will bring you relief. If you are in need, she will help you. She does not look to see what kind of person you have been. She simply comes to a heart that wants to love her.”
— St. Gabriel Possenti of Our Lady of Sorrows
//The Catholic Company//
Minute Meditation – Focus on the Love
Mary would have to remind herself whenever she would remember and start to dwell on Jesus’s suffering, that love redeemed it all, and with the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, she again saw in a flash of light that love was the reason from all eternity. Jesus came to love us and show us the love of the Father and how we are to love the Father. And with that vision, there seemed no past anymore, or even future. Everything was now, everything was new and exciting in the present. And how marvelous to live in that reality that was a preview of what was to come but more importantly, was already here, happening in her. She was living in the kingdom and all that needed to happen was that moment when she entered and saw the kingdom of love that was already there inside and all around her.
— from the book Nourishing Love: A Franciscan Celebration of Mary
by Murray Bodo, OFM
//Franciscan Media//
Meditation of the Day – Though Our Feelings Come and Go, His Love for Us Does Not
“On the whole, God’s love for us is a much safer subject to think about than our love for Him. Nobody can always have devout feelings: and even if we could, feelings are not what God principally cares about. Christian Love, either towards God or towards man, is an affair of the will. If we are trying to do His will we are obeying the commandment, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God.’ He will give us feelings of love if He pleases. We cannot create them for ourselves, and we must not demand them as a right. But the great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not. It is not wearied by our sins, or our indifference; and, therefore, it is quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of those sins, at whatever cost to us, at whatever cost to Him.”— C. S. Lewis, p. 132
//The Catholic Company//
Sermon Notes – Rules? There Are Rules?
“Rules? There Are Rules?”
Father Peter Fitzgibbons
May 8 – 9, 2021
Gospel: John 15:9-17
Now, when I was in seminary we had to study…a lot. “So, Father, you learned a lot of rules.” Maybe. We had a semester in Moral Theology. Then there was the Canon Law course which we took twice, because there are two different versions…the one we were living under at the time and the one that would be in effect five years down the road. The funny thing about that is the first part was the one we had to study and were tested on, but it was only written in Latin. It could not be translated into English, because there wasn’t a precise translation, and Canon Law is very precise. So, you sit there in class with a Latin dictionary. Great! One year of Latin in high school just didn’t quite cut it. So, yeah, there are a lot of rules, if you want to look at it that way. If you look at them without love, then they are RULES. But, if you at them with love, they are the way God gives us His healing power and keeps us from harm. So, they aren’t really RULES.
You know what else has RULES? Flight school. Anybody can take a plane up, and everybody can land it…but, landing the plane safely is the tricky part. You know who else has RULES? Doctors. Medicine has lots of RULES. You can’t do this and you can’t do that…well, you could, but a good outcome would be doubtful. What’s the first rule in. Medicine? Do no harm. Great idea! That philosophy almost applies to military doctors. Doctors study all these RULES so they can bring God’s healing gift to you. Otherwise, there are a lot of people who wouldn’t be here today. What are the RULES for? Through the actions of our health providers, the RULES are there so that God’s healing gifts may be granted to heal us, to console us, and to comfort our families. It’s the same with God’s Commandments. If you follow them, you get what He promised. The RULES of medicine are acts of love. The emptying of oneself, because you don’t know everything, allows God’s healing power to flow from you to the other person.
The same thing is true with the Church. The RULES are set in the Gospel as Commandments. What are they? They are works of love. “If you love me, keep My Commandments.” So, the Commandments are works of love. They are not RULES. What makes people look at the Church and say, “There are a lot of RULES” is ego. We call that “king baby.” “I want what I want when I want it.” Now, I am blessed to have a wonderful cardiologist. He’s a very, very gifted man and a wonderful healer, except he lacks something in his education. Maybe, he was sick that day in medical school. Apparently, he doesn’t know that bacon is heart healthy, and I can’t quite convince him that it is. I want what I want when I want it. Those are people’s RULES.
God loves us unconditionally, because God is love itself. He created us out of love, and He saved us out of love. God continues to loves us even when we tick him off by sinning. We have to accept His love and give that love back. But, we put conditions on receiving Him as if we are the ones making the RULES. Is anybody here perfect? Bea, don’t put your hand up. So, no one. That’s why we need a Savior, and that’s why we are here. This is a hospital for sinners – not hotel for saints. We do not set conditions on His love; instead, we seek it. He wants to give Himself to us, but not if we aren’t prepared to receive Him. These are the RULES so that the gift of His love will not be insulted, mocked, or held up for ridicule. We take His love and make a mockery of it.
Even though God’s love is unconditional, we cannot do whatever we want just because God will love us anyway. “I can do this because God loves me unconditionally.” “I’m going to do that because God will love me anyway.” No…you cannot. In the Gospel, our Lord said, “Whoever does not carry his cross and follow Me cannot be My disciple” (Matthew 10:38) and everybody left Him. When He declared that marriage is between one man and one woman (Matthew 19:4-7), everybody left Him. When our Lord told His disciples, “…unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53), everybody left Him. Christ said, “If you keep My commandments, you will remain in My love” (John 15:10). These are the RULES. We have RULES to guide us so that we understand what acts of love are and what they are not.
We all make mistakes, and we are judged on them. “My conscious is my guide.” Well, it shouldn’t be. The judgement of the Church should be your guide, because it is infallible in matters of faith and morals. My own judgement is not too good. Remember bacon? There are rules about Holy Communion. Non-Catholics and non-practicing Catholics cannot receive. Saint Paul wrote that whoever receives the Eucharist unworthily “will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord” (1 Cor. 11:27-30). They are not guilty of being impolite – they are guilty of His death. Instead of loving Christ, those who receive unworthily are taking His gift and throwing it in His face. “I don’t care what You want, this is what I want.” Be sure to read the black part of Scripture, and leave the white part alone. These are not RULES. There are no RULES in the Church…only acts of love. If we find His Commandments and the Church’s rules to be odious and burdensome, that’s our ego from the first sin. Remember, it was not committed by Adam and Eve, but by Lucifer who said, “I will not serve.”
The next time you hear someone say, “Catholics have a lot of RULES,” just say, ‘”You know, if you read the Gospels, Jesus had a lot of RULES. But, those RULES tell us how to die to ourselves so that He can live within us.” Yes, we have RULES, but they are acts of love. If we have a problem with the RULES, then we have a problem with our love of God.
How will you apply this message to your life? Are you making a mockery of His love by following your own set of rules instead of His Commandments?
You can read all of Father Fitzgibbons’ sermons by going to: https://annunciationcatholicalbemarle.com/ and clicking on “Blog” then “Categories” and then “Sermon Notes.” From a cell phone, click on “Blog” then “Menu” and then “Categories” (located at the end of page). There is also a search box if you are looking for a specific topic.
Minute Meditation – The Model of What It Means to Love
Mary is the model of what it means to love because love means helping those who need us, even when we ourselves might be in need. Mary is not self-absorbed. She even teaches her son, Jesus, that those in need take precedence even over the ministry or work we think is all important.
What about us? Who do we spend most our time thinking about? Whose needs are always on our mind? Isn’t it usually ourselves? But what is Mary telling us? Mary is our spiritual mother, and she is saying to us, as she said to her son, “Don’t forget those who have a more pressing need than you do. Remember to remember others. How can you be of help?”
— from the book Nourishing Love: A Franciscan Celebration of Mary
by Murray Bodo, OFM
//Franciscan Media//
Meditation of the Day – If I Had The Tongues of Angels
“Infinite grief I wish from My creature in two ways: in one way, through her sorrow for her own sins, which she has committed against Me her Creator; in the other way, through her sorrow for the sins which she sees her neighbors commit against Me. Of such as these, inasmuch as they have infinite desire, that is, are joined to Me by an affection of love, and therefore grieve when they offend Me, or see Me offended, their every pain, whether spiritual or corporeal, from wherever it may come, receives infinite merit, and satisfies for a guilt which deserved an infinite penalty, although their works are finite and done in finite time; but, inasmuch as they possess the virtue of desire, and sustain their suffering with desire, and contrition, and infinite displeasure against their guilt, their pain is held worthy. Paul explained this when he said: If I had the tongues of angels, and if I knew the things of the future and gave my body to be burned, and have not love, it would be worth nothing to me. The glorious Apostle thus shows that finite works are not valid, either as punishment or recompense, without the condiment of the affection of love.”— St. Catherine of Siena, p. 4
Meditation of the Day – Allow the Rays of His Love and Grace to Bathe Your Soul
“In our self-centered culture and classic American emphasis on work, we often feel we have to accomplish something during our times of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. We rate our experience by how ‘good’ our prayer was, how heartfelt our devotion was, or how focused we could remain. Yet prayer and contemplation are fundamentally God’s work, in which we are invited to participate. We need only to give Him the opening, and He will do the rest. By coming to adoration, we are handing Him the keys to our hearts, allowing the rays of His love and grace to bathe our souls in the light of His Presence, as the rays of the sun bathe our bodies in light. If we can take the time to pull away from the busyness and distractions of life and just sit at His feet, He will lead us.”— Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration, p. 33
//The Catholic Company//