Daily Writing
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November 8, 2009
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November 9th Holy
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November 8, 2009
2nd Sunday of Advent
Baruch 5: 1-9
Jerusalem, take off your dress of sorrow
and distress,
put on the beauty of God’s glory
for evermore,
wrap the cloak of God’s saving justice
around you,
put the diadem of the Eternal One’s glory
on your head,
for God means to show your splendour
to every nation under heaven,
and the name God gives you
for evermore will be,
‘Peace–through–Justice,
and Glory–through–Devotion’.
Arise, Jerusalem, stand on the heights
and turn your eyes to the east:
see your children reassembled
from west and east
at the Holy One’s command,
rejoicing because God has remembered.
Though they left you on foot
driven by enemies,
now God brings them back to you,
carried gloriously, like a royal throne.
For God has decreed the flattening
of each high mountain,
of the everlasting hills,
the filling of the valleys
to make the ground level
so that Israel can walk safely
in God’s glory.
And the forests and every fragrant tree
will provide shade
for Israel, at God’s command;
for God will guide Israel in joy
by the light of his glory,
with the mercy and saving justice
which come from him.
Philippians 1: 4-6, 8-11
and every time I pray for you all, I always pray with joy for your partnership in the gospel from the very first day up to the present. I am quite confident that the One who began a good work in you will go on completing it until the Day of Jesus Christ comes.
For God will testify for me how much I long for you all with the warm longing of Christ Jesus; it is my prayer that your love for one another may grow more and more with the knowledge and complete understanding that will help you to come to true discernment, so that you will be innocent and free of any trace of guilt when the Day of Christ comes, entirely filled with the fruits of uprightness through Jesus Christ, for the glory and praise of God.
Luke 3: 1-6
In the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar's reign, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judaea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of the territories of Ituraea and Trachonitis, Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, and while the high-priesthood was held by Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah, in the desert. He went through the whole Jordan area proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the sayings of Isaiah the prophet:
A voice of one that cries in the desert:
Prepare a way for the Lord,
make his paths straight!
Let every valley be filled in,
every mountain and hill be levelled,
winding ways be straightened
and rough roads made smooth,
and all humanity
will see the salvation of God.
December 10, 2006
INTRODUCTION: In today’s first reading, we hear from Baruch, the secretary of Jeremiah the prophet and apparently a prophet himself. He lived during the Babylonian exile over 500 years before Christ. When the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem, they destroyed everything and took most of its citizens to Babylon as captives. The prophet Baruch addresses Jerusalem and tells the city to rejoice, God will bring back the captives and Jerusalem will prosper again.
HOMILY: Father Joseph Donders who lives in Washington DC tells an interesting story about going to the airport to pick up a friend who was coming to visit him from Africa. It was a cold, winter day and all the trees were bare except for a few firs and the pines. This was the first time his friend had ever left his home country in Africa. As he looked at the trees he said, “I had heard about this, but I did not realize things were so bad.” Not knowing what his African friend was talking about, Fr. Donders asked “What do you mean?” His friend said he heard about air pollution in America and its effect on the trees, “but,” he said, “I never thought it was bad as this with all those trees dead!”
In the part of Africa where his visitor came from, the trees were always green and most of the time in full bloom. Some trees would lose their leaves for brief periods throughout the year but never all at once as happens here in the fall and winter in the United States. So the visitor from Africa presumed air pollution had killed them all.
Two men saw the same thing and yet their view was entirely different. One saw only death and destruction, the other saw nothing of the kind, for he could see beyond the winter to springtime and new life. Our readings today demonstrate a similar event. Baruch, in today’s first reading, is speaking to God’s people during the upheaval of the Babylonian exile. He tells them God is ready to bring the exiles back home, and the return home will be a glorious event. By this time the people had lost hope that Jerusalem would ever be rebuilt, and the exiles believed they would be spending the rest of their lives as captives in a foreign land. The prophet saw beyond their present captivity to a glorious future.
The Jews at the time of John the Baptist, 500 years later, were not a free people. They had their Temple; Jerusalem had been rebuilt. But they were part of the great Roman Empire. Rome made the rules, Rome collected their taxes (and they were heavily taxed), Roman soldiers marched through their streets and a Roman governor who was noted for his brutality, named Pontius Pilate, controlled their land. Most of us think of Pilate as sympathetic or just plain weak because of the way he handled Jesus when Jesus was arrested. Most of us do not know that in a couple of years Pilate would lose his job because his Roman bosses, who were not nice people themselves, considered him too ruthless and violent. But the prophet John the Baptist saw beyond all their oppression as he quotes from the prophet Isaiah: “all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”
In our own day there are enough things going on to depress us if we dwell on them all. It might be world events, it might be the social and moral climate we live in, it might be personal agonies or worries. Sometimes we need help to see beyond our present woes, someone who can give us hope, someone who is a prophet who can tells us spring will soon be here and the trees will be in full bloom again.
This is what our readings are telling us. This is what Jesus’ birth is telling us. This is what his presence with us today in the Eucharist is telling us. But today’s readings are telling us one more thing. They are telling us we can’t just sit back and wait for it all to happen. We have to prepare. Quoting Isaiah, the Baptist cries out to prepare the way of the Lord.
There is a danger that when I say the word “prepare” most people will start thinking “yeah! I have tons of things to get ready!” Suddenly I’ll lose their attention while they’re making their list and checking it twice thinking of all the things they have to do. That’s not what it’s all about. The springtime that we have to look forward to depends on our willingness to open our lives to it through faith or we will remain in the cold and dark. The new life we hope for comes to us only when we submit our lives to Jesus as our Lord and Savior.
So when I say prepare, I want you to look into your lives more deeply than thinking of decorations or parties or gifts or cards. Those are nice, but there’s more to it. St. Paul today gives us an idea of what we should be doing to prepare when he tells the Philippians what he prays for them. He prays that their love for God and for each other may increase, that they keep a sense of what is important in life and that they live pure and blameless lives filled with good works. That is my prayer for you too. Amen.
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24"
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$300 Our Lady of Grace w/glass 18"
$300 Our Lady of Mt. Carmel w/glass
18" $300 Our Lady of Guadalupe w/glass 12"
$200 Fatima w/glass
11"
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18"
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July 31, 1994
Words of Jesus to Members of
Shepherds of Christ Associates:"My beloved priest-companion, I intend to use the priestly newsletter, Shepherds of Christ, and the movement, Shepherds of Christ Associates, in a powerful way for the renewal of My Church and the world.
"I will use the newsletter and the chapters of Shepherds of Christ Associates as a powerful instrument for spreading devotion to My Heart and My Mother's Heart.
"I am calling many to become members of Shepherds of Christ Associates. To all of them I will give great blessings. I will use them as instruments to help bring about the triumph of the Immaculate Heart and the reign of My Sacred Heart. I will give great graces to the members of Shepherds of Christ Associates. I will call them to be deeply united to My Heart and to Mary's Heart as I lead them ever closer to My Father in the Holy Spirit."
- Message from Jesus to Father Edward J. Carter, S.J., Founder, as given on July 31, 1994,
feast of Saint Ignatius Loyola, Founder of the Society of Jesus (The Jesuits)
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