416 N 2nd St, Albemarle, NC, 28001 | (704) 982-2910
God has designed a great journey just for you. Fr. Tom shares with Ben his experience with the seven sacraments and how they help us live good lives.
Click on link to watch:
https://www.dynamiccatholic.com/plus/blessed/first-reconciliation-1-4.html
This past week ends the octave of Easter. People say, “We wish you Easter joy.” Thank you! Can you define Easter joy? Is it the day for biting the ears off Easter bunnies? You barbarians! I love chocolate bunny ears. I’ll be a real man and say it. . . I love chocolate bunny ears! Anyone who wants to make fun of that, I’m a real man and can take it. However, I don’t do the hard-boiled egg thing. Is Easter joy about having lamb with mint jelly? You know what I had for Easter dinner? A peanut butter and jelly sandwich. You know why? I was out of SpaghettiOs. Welcome to bachelor living!
So, what is Easter joy? Easter joy exists on two levels. . .intellectually and internally. We can have it on an intellectual level by knowing that our dear Lord suffered and died for our sins and then rose again. In doing so, He opened the doors of Heaven for us so that we might have eternal life. We all now have a chance to get to Heaven, and He showed us the way. He also gave us the means to get there. What are the means in which we can get to Heaven? Through the Sacramental Life of the Church. The source of our internal joy is the gift of the Sacraments and by taking advantage of the gifts He gave us by His sacrifice, death, and resurrection. From His wounded side, the one that Saint Thomas touched, flows the Blood and Water to the Sacramental Life of the Church.
The Sacraments are the life of the Church. Our Lord ordained the apostles on Holy Thursday and later gave them the power to forgive sins. We still hold to that tradition in the Church. I’m ordained a priest, and I said my first Mass with my bishop. After that, in the sacristy, I received a document called “faculties” which gives me permission to absolve people from their sins. Only a priest and a bishop can act in the person of Christ. They celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and therefore, have the power to administer the Sacraments of the Church which are the fruits of our Lord’s Passion and death. . .the Holy Sacrifice. Only a priest or bishop can do that. Remember what is said during the Mass? “This is My body. This is My blood.” I don’t say “This is Christ’s body. This is Christ’s blood.” During the Sacrament of Penance, I act in the person of Christ. I don’t say “Christ absolves you.” I say, “I absolve you” . . .not the “Church absolves you” or “We absolve you” but “I absolve you” while acting in the person of Christ. The words are very important so that we can have that joy inside of us, and so that we may have the joy of Easter and the fruits of it.
Through our Good Lord’s Passion, death, and resurrection, we are strengthened so that we can follow Him. It is through our own Calvary’s and our own resurrections that we can be with Him forever. Pop quiz: When do you receive the Holy Spirit? At Baptism. “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit.” When is the second time you receive the Holy Spirit? Penance. Penance comes before Holy Communion. One happens before the other. During Holy Communion, you receive the Savior. What does He save you from? Our sins. If you aren’t sick, there’s no need to see a doctor, and you’re just wasting the doctor’s time.
In the Sacraments, you see the full Divinity. . .all of It. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. You may be thinking, “In Confirmation, you also receive the Holy Spirit.” I like it when I get asked that question. Yeah, that’s true but we don’t subdivide God with a little slice here and little slice there. When you receive the Sacraments, you receive all of God, not just parts of Him. This is how we internalize and experience the joy of Easter, especially the joy of the forgiveness of our sins. And the joy of receiving our Good Lord like the apostles did from His own hands. That’s why I am the only one who gives Holy Communion. I am the priest acting in the person of Christ, so I give you Communion by my own hand. It’s not that I think that much of myself – I really do – but it is Christ who feeds you. I am a symbol of Christ, acting in the person of Christ, so it is He who feeds you the Body of Christ. It is the fruits of our Good Lord’s suffering, death, and resurrection.
That’s how we experience Easter joy. It’s not from all the beautiful Easter flowers – we got a great deal on them by the way. It’s not from how beautiful the church looks – and it does. True Easter joy comes from experiencing God’s love. Love that was forsaken by sin and rejected by sin. But that’s not the end of the story. Most people are happy when they see their loved ones. In my family, we were happy when they left . . .but, that’s just us. Aren’t you happy when you have your loved ones with you after being separated from them before their visit? So too is our Lord. We have Easter joy by God coming down and infusing His very self into our souls for our salvation. That is true Easter joy.
How will you apply this message to your life?
You can read all of Father Fitzgibbons’ sermons by going to AnnunciationCatholicAlbemarle.com, clicking on “Blog” then “Categories” and then “Sermon Notes.” Sermon notes can also be found on the Church Facebook page by searching for “Facebook Our Lady of the Annunciation Albemarle”
“Where is the Love?”
Father Peter Fitzgibbons
March 5-6, 2022
Gospel: Luke 4:1-13
One of the great temptations that snares a lot of people because it sounds really good, besides bacon, is to do things for other people out of compassion. There is a lot of false compassion out there. “If you love me, you will do this for me.” “Oh, doctor, I hurt really bad. May I have some OxyContin?” That’s false compassion. Saint Luke recounts our Lord’s first three temptations. There are others, but these are the first three. With the first temptation of Christ, which happens to us in one form or another, the devil used false compassion. “People are bad because they lack stuff. They lack food. They lack education. They lack computers. They don’t have Facebook. They are poor, and they need stuff. If they had stuff, they wouldn’t be bad.” None of that is true. How many rich people have had abortions? In my own life, my mother’s family was very poor, and none of them went to prison. I take that back – my uncle went to prison, but he worked there. He was a Correctional Officer. The State of Massachusetts had him on work release for thirty years and finally told him he was too old and gave him his pension. He was from the Joe Cutrone School of Correctional Officers. He was a nice guy, and the murderers liked him. Give them some cigarettes, and they were happy. My cousin Philip was murdered, and they sent his murderer to the prison my uncle retired from. The inmate state employees there knew who he was. “We’ll take care of it as a favor.” They were going to take care of some business for him. My uncle told them, “No, no. Don’t do that.” That’s false compassion. Now, I go out to our local FU (Felon University), and there are doctors there, people with medical degrees, and lawyers. There are people there with advanced degrees and people with no degrees. There are rich people and poor people. People choose evil. If they don’t have a choice, they are put into a state hospital. They choose evil because they choose satan over Christ. It’s not a lack of anything. It’s a choice. Fat people go to prison. And believe it or not, inmates get fat in prison. So, it’s not a lack of anything. People are using false compassion when they say, “Let’s give all this charity to poor people, and they won’t be bad.” We have spent nine trillion dollars on various charities, but we don’t tell them about Jesus. Instead, we tell them how to work on a computer. I don’t have much computer knowledge, so I’m lucky that I know people.
The next temptation was all about power. Do you know who the most powerful person in the Church was? Saint Theresa of Calcutta. She wasn’t zealous for power, nor did she flaunt it. But look at the power of this little nun. She weighed about 120 pounds soaking wet with lead weights in her pocket. Which of our cardinals ever went up to the sitting president and vice president wagging their finger about abortion? Which one? Which one could have an audience with the Pope anytime she wanted? Which one spoke at the United Nations? Which one taught us how to love by living that love? Saint Theresa was the most powerful person in the Church. It’s not about getting into office, being ordained, having big titles after your name, or anything like that. I have titles after my name and some before my name. Whoopee! They mean nothing. They don’t even get me out of tickets anymore with these atheist cops down here.
There is power in love. It’s not political power, and it’s not power in the Church. “Oh, I have a position in the Church. I’m so and so!” Shut-up! Where is your love? When you are sitting with a sick person about to die, where is your love? “I’m in charge of programming.” You come with me, and we’ll see how that love in action does. I’ll have you throwing up in about an hour. That’s love in action. Come and take care of the sick. Sometimes, they’ll make it just inside the door before they catch a whiff of the smell. Ugh! What? Love is action. It’s not a position.
We don’t need to change any laws. We have more laws than we know what to do with. We can’t even incarcerate people because there’s no room for them. People want to change the Mass. They want to change the Sacraments. If you can do it better than Jesus, let me know. Now, husbands and wives . . . has your spouse ever told you they love you? I would hope so. Does that ever get old? Does it need to be changed? Does it need to be updated? Does it need to be made more relevant? Do you need a praise band going on there? Do you want some dancing down the hallway? We don’t need to change the Mass or the Sacraments. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is a divine act of love, and it doesn’t get old. What gets old is our pride when we think we can make it better. During the Sacrifice of the Mass, what is Jesus saying? He is saying, “I love you. This is how much I love you.” That never gets old. It only gets old if you don’t have room in your heart to say to Jesus, “I love you too.”
How will you apply this message to your life?
You can read all of Father Fitzgibbons’ sermons by going to http://AnnunciationCatholicAlbemarle.com/ and clicking on “Blog” then “Categories” and then “Sermon Notes.” Sermon notes can also be found on the church Facebook page by searching for “Facebook Our Lady of the Annunciation Albemarle”
“Often Jesus asks the sick to believe. He makes use of signs to heal: spittle and the laying on of hands, mud and washing. The sick try to touch him, ‘for power came forth from him and healed them all’. And so in the sacraments Christ continues to ‘touch’ us in order to heal us. Moved by so much suffering Christ not only allows himself to be touched by the sick, but he makes their miseries his own: ‘He took our infirmities and bore our diseases’. But he did not heal all the sick. His healings were signs of the coming of the Kingdom of God. They announced a more radical healing: the victory over sin and death through his Passover. On the cross Christ took upon himself the whole weight of evil and took away the ‘sin of the world’, of which illness is only a consequence. By his passion and death on the cross Christ has given a new meaning to suffering: it can henceforth configure us to him and unite us with his redemptive Passion.”—Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1504-05
//Catholic Company//
“That 3 in 1 and 1 in 3 Thing”
Father Peter Fitzgibbons
May 22 – 23, 2021
Gospel: John 20:19-23
Today, Holy Mother Church celebrates the Solemnity of Pentecost which is when the Holy Spirit came upon the Apostles. It’s also the birthday of the Church. Now, let me ask you a question. When did you first receive the Holy Spirit? At Baptism. Remember, when I baptize you, it is done in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. When is the next time you receive the gift of the Holy Spirit? At Confession. After that? Holy Communion. Now, you may be thinking, “You also receive the Holy Spirit at Confirmation.” Yeah, you do. You receive Jesus, and you receive God the Father. That 3 in 1 and 1 in 3 thing. You receive the fullness of the Spirit. In each Sacrament, you receive the whole God.
The Sacraments are given for different purposes depending on your particular mission in the Body of Christ. At Baptism, you were given the gift of God Himself. In each Sacrament, you get the gift of the whole God…not just a slice of Him. You get the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In Baptism, Christ asked for, and you, through your parents, gave Him your human nature. The human nature He took from Mary in the body He was born with, taught with, healed with, suffered with, and redeemed us with is now in Heaven. So, how does He continue His mission to teach, heal, and sanctify the world? It goes on through us by living a good Catholic life. In whatever part of the Body of Christ He has assigned us, we work for His glory and the salvation of souls. So, if you are in hell, you are a self- made man.
Christ takes our human nature at Baptism, so, we are part of His new body which is the Church. Each of us has a place in the body of Christ to do the work of bringing Him to the world. Through the gifts of the Holy Spirit, He helps us accomplish that mission. There are seven gifts (wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord) and 12 fruits (charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, long-suffering, humility, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, and chastity). The whole purpose of giving us the Holy Spirit through the Sacraments is to bring God’s love to the world and to make that love manifest in whatever part of the Body we are in. The graces of the Holy Spirit strengthen us so that we can carry out that mission.
Part of my job as a priest is working at the veterans’ hospital in Hospice. Hospice is a part of the hospital where people who are very sick and in the last six months of their lives are cared for by specially trained doctors and nurses. They have all sorts of terrible diseases. We had one patient who had Progressive Supranuclear Palsy which is a rare disease that the patient contracted while working as a doctor in Vietnam. His brain turned into jelly, and there is no treatment. It’s so sad. The hospice staff try to make their patients as comfortable and pain-free as possible. A few years ago, there was a nice area with a kitchen and dining room where hospice patients could come out of their rooms and eat together. Other veterans from across the hospital would come down and have lunch with them. It was so much fun to laugh and talk with them. I would pick up trays and do whatever I could for them. You know what a sign of God’s love looks like? There was a hospice patient at the luncheon who couldn’t feed himself…he was that sick. Another man who, after this incident died about two weeks later, was also at the luncheon. But, instead of eating his own lunch, he spent that time feeding the patient who couldn’t feed himself. One would think that if you’re dying, it would be all about you. But, this is what God’s love looks like. This was an act of the Holy Spirit. The staff would have fed that patient, but he did it. He didn’t have to do it, but he wanted to. He made sure that man ate before he did. That is a sign of the Holy Spirit in action and God’s love is in the world.
Another thing they have done in Hospice, and hopefully will do again once COVID is over, is that when veterans are actively dying and don’t have family members there, volunteers come and sit with them all night and all day so that they don’t have to die alone. Usually, the veterans are very old and don’t have anybody. But, a veteran should never die alone. In the military, you never leave a fallen comrade. I’ve always thought that this is a sign of Christ, along with their guardian angel, being with them as they leave this life. You see the love of Christ in those volunteers. They don’t need to teach us…their actions teach us everything. It’s all through the promptings of the Holy Spirit who moves and works within us – not always the way want; otherwise, I’d be a monsignor!
I’ll tell you a story about the nursing staff. Don’t let this get back to them. World War II veterans are very old, and when they are nearing the time of their passing, all of the memories of what they had to do during the war come back. Mine will come back too when it’s my time. It’s just part of what we went through. It comes back for a lot of the men who saw combat. Many times, it was their wives who helped them keep it all together, and if their wives are no longer with them, it’s a real hardship for them. I remember this one man who was in his nineties and about to leave us asked the nurse if she would hold his hand until he fell asleep. The memories had come back, and his wife had done that for him. That’s not in any nurse’s job description. But, she sacrificed her own time to sit with that man while he faced his nightmares. I’ve sat with veterans as they were passing from this life…that’s what we do. We offer spontaneous acts of love. I’ve seen you do it. Your acts of generosity are acts of the Holy Spirit. You are showing Christ’s love. If you ask anyone why they do it, they would probably say that they don’t know, but it felt like the right thing to do. Do they get paid for it? No. It was just the right thing to do. These are the actions of the Holy Spirit using our human natures to show Christ’s love to the world. But, so that we can repeat these acts of love, we must be refreshed in the Holy Spirit by frequently participating in the Sacrament of Penance and Holy Communion.
What is so beautiful about these acts of love is that you do it without thinking. It’s just a normal response. You don’t stop and think about what you should or shouldn’t do…you just do it. That’s the action of the Holy Spirit letting the Spirit work in you to bring the love of Christ to the world. And, believe it or not, someone will see and be taught God’s word simply through your acts of love
How will you apply this message to your life? Refresh yourself in the Holy Spirit by frequently participating in the Sacrament of Penance and Holy Communion
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.