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Broadcasting Prayer Service
today November 17th
from 11:00 to 2:00
Please tune in & pray with us.

Pray for Fr. Joe, Dan, Mary,
        Rita, Jim, Rosie, Louie's family –
        Madonna, Christopher, Sanja,
        all Shepherds of Christ intentions on lists.

Prayer for Grace for our Country

Dear Father united to Jesus in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the Sacrifice of Calvary sacramentally made present, celebrated around the world, in the Holy Spirit. We offer up all we do united to the Mass. We unite in one mind and one heart as members of the mystical body of Christ, with Christ our head in the pure and holy Hearts of Jesus and Mary, through the powerful intercession of Mary with all the angels and saints and souls in purgatory, and we beg for the saving grace, for our country, the United States. Please help us. We further pray for unity to always do the will of God in love. We spread the Blood of Jesus on the leaders and people of the United States and cast the devil into hell. We consecrate our country to the Sacred Heart and Immaculate Heart and all our dioceses, and beg for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. God help us. We pray for our families, the priests, the Church and the world. In the Name of Jesus please hear us, we pray. We pray for our president and leaders. We pray that we are united as one nation under God to work together in love as God wants.

November 16, 2019

R. Dear Friend,

I give my heart to Jesus and Mary with you in love.
They told us today they put Fr. Joe's new homily book in the Vatican library.

Please pray for Fr. Joe.

God has blessed us with all his homilies and all the priests who use these Books.

Blue Book 19 is at the printer.

Please pray for this and all involved.

Blue Book 19 is about teaching us to pray united to the Mass.

So powerful.

It is teaching us to be the Spouse of the Lamb - so intimate with Jesus.

Please help us with your prayers and donations to print and circulate this wonderful help to pray deeply united to Christ.

God has called you to help and pray.

Love is not love until you give it away.

Eucharist - Thanksgiving.

God gives us a sharing in His life in Baptism and Jesus feeds that life with Himself in the Eucharist.

The Word and the Eucharist is the Bread of Life.

I love and thank you for your prayers, your work and donations.

Jesus thanks you.

God bless you, praying for you.

Love, Rita and all at Shepherds of Christ.

Come to Florida December 17th for the 23rd Anniversary of Mary’s apparition on the Clearwater building.

Also Jesus asked people to come to Florida December 5th
And China December 13th.

Love,
Rita and all at Shepherds of Christ.

November 17, 2019

R. Dear Jesus,

                    Thank You for loving us. Thank You
                for dying for us and rising from
                the dead.

                    Thank You for teaching us how
                to pray – United to the Mass, the rosary,
                Morning Offering, Holy Spirit Novena,
                Shepherds of Christ Prayers, Infant of Prague
                Novena, The Prayer Before Mass, Prayer for
                Intimacy with the Lamb, Prayer for Union,
                the Father's Prayer, Prayer for the Country –

6:20 Prayers –

All the Prayers You taught us.

                I love You God, please help Fr. Joe,
                and my brother and sister and
                all of us on the prayer list.

                Please consecrate our hearts to
                the Hearts of Jesus and Mary as far as
                we are able – Cast the devil
                far away in the Name of Jesus Christ,
                Spread Blood of Jesus on all of us.

Please send the Holy Spirit.

                R. Please God we pray united
                to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass –
                Please help us now –
                We pray God through the
                intercession of Our Lady of Clearwater
                and Fr. Carter –
                Please help us –

Amen –

13th Sunday of Ordinary Time

June 26, 2016

INTRODUCTION – (1 Kings 19:16,19-21; Gal 5: 1,13-18; Luke 9:51-62) No one knows for sure how often Jesus traveled to Jerusalem. Luke tells us when Jesus was young, his parents brought him to Jerusalem every year. It was about a three-day trip on foot, one way, if you made 25 miles a day. And that would have been a challenge considering that some portions of the trip were very hilly. Of course, we know nothing about Jesus’ years as a teenager or young adult. We only know about things he said or did after he began his public ministry. St. John, in his gospel, mentions three times during Jesus’ public ministry when he was in Jerusalem for Passover. Matthew, Mark and Luke tell us only of one trip to Jerusalem – Jesus’ last trip. In today’s gospel Luke begins to tell us about that last trip. It is an extremely important turning point in his gospel. Jesus knew what was waiting for him when he got there. This part of the gospel is called the “Journey Narrative,” and it goes on for practically ten chapters.

    Our first reading was chosen to correspond with the ideal of total commitment to one’s call. It tells about two Old Testament prophets, Elijah and Elisha, who lived about 850 years before Christ. Elijah was getting old and his life was coming to an end. At God's command he chose Elisha to replace him. Elisha was busy farming and Elijah came up to him and placed his mantle on Elisha’s shoulders. This gesture symbolized God’s call – that Elisha should replace Elijah. It would be analogous to my taking off my vestment and putting it over someone’s shoulders. The gesture would be obvious. The reading tells us Elisha had 12 yoke of oxen which would indicate that Elisha must have been quite a prosperous farmer. When he sacrificed his animals and burned his farming equipment, he was indicating his total commitment to his new vocation. Just as Jesus would do almost nine centuries later as he began his journey to Jerusalem, he broke completely with his former way of life and did not look back.

HOMILY – Most of you have heard this story, but it is worth repeating because it can speak to so many of us – I say “us” because I have to admit I’m as guilty in one way or another as anyone here. It’s a story about Satan calling his chief staff members together to complain that business is bad, too many people are getting into heaven, and the evil beings in hell had to come up with a strategy to change that around. So, Satan asks, who has a good idea of what we can do. One advisor said: “let’s tell people there is no heaven and they need to get as much enjoyment out of life as possible right now.” Satan was unimpressed – he said we’ve been using that line for thousands of years.” His next advisor said: “let’s tell people there is no hell, that magically everyone will be forgiven and everyone will be happy – no matter how much evil they may have in their hearts or how many people they’ve hurt.” Again Satan was unimpressed. “That won’t work. Too many people are reading the Bible and believing it.” Finally, a third member of Satan’s staff said: “Tell people there is no hurry…no hurry to change their life, to forgive someone who hurt them, to ask forgiveness for something they should not have done; there’s no hurry to get to Church this weekend - they can always go next weekend; no hurry to set aside some time to pray, to help a friend or neighbor - tomorrow will be soon enough.” Satan was impressed, but he said “what do you tell them if they are afraid they will run out of tomorrows?” Satan’s staff member had an answer for that too; he said: “I just tell them not to think about that. It’s just morose and depressing to think about – think about happier things.”

    As I wrote this, I was reminded of when I was teaching high school. I had to teach a section on the four last things. The students kept complaining, “why do we need to think about those things, it’s so gloomy.” By the way: the four last things were death, judgement, heaven and hell. They wanted to talk about peace, joy, happiness and love. Believe me: I’m all for peace, joy, happiness and love, but thinking about the negative events that might come our way – as they reach everyone eventually – help us to be better prepared to deal with them.

    Getting to today’s gospel, what is Jesus telling us today? He’s telling us there will come a time when we run out of tomorrows. In our gospel we see a determined Jesus. Following the will of his father is urgent. He didn’t have time to call down destruction on the Samaritans who rejected him, so they lost out on whatever he could have brought them. The persons who wanted to follow Jesus wanted Jesus to provide them with a few more comforts, or to have Jesus allow them to spend a little longer with their families. Jesus didn’t have time to do that.

    When a person is young, it seems like tomorrows are infinite. As we age, we realize that’s not so. Jesus knew his days were numbered. He predicted it three times. It was the suffering and the cross he foresaw, but he also saw he would enter into eternal glory with his Heavenly Father.

    He doesn’t tell us, if we follow him, we will avoid suffering – that’s part of life in this world for everyone, but if we follow him we can handle suffering more easily and our pain and suffering will lead us also to eternal glory.

3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time

January 24, 2016 (excerpt)

HOMILY – Since we will be hearing a lot from Luke’s gospel this year, our liturgy reminds us of why Luke wrote his gospel and the care he had taken to compose it accurately. After this introduction to his gospel, we skip over the accounts of Jesus’ birth, his baptism, his 40 days in the wilderness and his temptations and we come to the start of his public ministry.

Although Jesus had already been busy teaching and healing, Luke wants to start telling us about Jesus’ public ministry with the account of his visit to his home town: Nazareth. This is an important part of Luke’s gospel because it foreshadows the entire ministry of Jesus. His visit to his relatives and friends in Nazareth started favorably but ended with the people’s rejection of Jesus as we will hear next week.

Today, however, as Jesus begins his ministry, he announces he had been anointed by the Spirit of God (he is the anointed one – which in Greek is Christos) and as we continue to listen to Luke’s account, we learn that Jesus’ ministry is guided by that same Spirit. Jesus thus fulfills the words of the prophet Isaiah and in fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah, Jesus reveals the saving love of God.

4th Sunday of Ordinary Time

January 31, 2016

INTRODUCTION – (Jeremiah 1,4-5.17-19; I Cor. 12,31-13,13; Lk 4, 21-30) Our gospel last week ended with Jesus’ visit to his hometown of Nazareth. Last week’s gospel told us Jesus went to the synagogue service on the Sabbath and was invited to do a reading from the Scriptures and he chose a passage from the prophet Isaiah to read and comment on.

    Today’s gospel continues to tell us about that visit. His relatives, friends and former neighbors responded favorably to his message, but their response quickly turned into hostility. Our first reading, as usual, prepares us for the gospel. Jeremiah the prophet heard God’s call to preach, a job that God warned him would lead to suffering and rejection.

HOMILY – Today’s gospel reminds me somewhat of Rodney Dangerfield. He was famous for the expression: “I don’t get no respect.” He said: “when I was young, all I knew was rejection. My yo-yo, it never came back… “I asked my old man if I could go ice skating on the lake. He told me, ‘wait till it gets warmer.’” “Once when I was lost I saw a policeman and asked him to help me find my parents. I said to him, ‘Do you think we’ll ever find them?” the policeman said, ‘I don’t know kid. There are so many places they could hide.’” He said once in a swimming pool he was drowning. He screamed for help and the lifeguard toldhim to hold it down. (from Dynamic Preaching, January – March 2016, pg 28)

    I imagine Jesus was feeling the same way when he went to visit relatives, friends and former neighbors for the first time after he began his ministry of preaching and healing. We hear Jesus in today’s gospel quoting the proverb: “no prophet is accepted in his own native place.” Jesus had just told his listeners that God’s Spirit had anointed him; in other words, he spoke for God, he spoke as a prophet. At the end of his time in Nazareth, he received not only no respect from the people who had known him most all of his life, they were ready to put him to death.

    Even though Jesus had already been preaching and healing in Capernaum, St. Luke uses this event to begin telling us about Jesus’ public ministry. He does so because “this event announces who Jesus is, of what his ministry consists, what his church will be and do, and what will be the response to both Jesus and the church.” (Fred Craddock: Luke, Interpretation, pg 61) So let us look at our gospel more closely.

    It is clear to us from the passage who Jesus is, what he came to do, and the ultimate response to his ministry by his own chosen people with whom he lived and worked. What is not clear is how this gathering of his relations, friends and former neighbors could have moved so quickly from a favorable response to him to the place where they wanted to put him to death. For a long time, I had thought that those who knew him throughout his years at Nazareth rejected him because they had known him as a person who belonged to the working class (since Joseph was a skilled laborer, it would have been the custom for Jesus to grow up learning and working in that trade). Here he was, reading Scripture to them (it shows Jesus knew how toread) and interpreting it for them. Not only was he interpreting it, he was claiming to be the one the Scriptures were speaking of (in reality claiming a dignity and honor higher than any of them: “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me…”). I expected they took serious offense at that.

    Looking at the passage more closely, there is an inference that they expected to have some claim on him and on his wondrous powers. It’s almost as if they were saying stay here and take care of us: “do here in your native place the things that we heard were done in Capernaum.” Jesus’ answer implied not only would he reach out to help others in other places, but like Elijah and Elisha he would even share God’s blessings with pagans. Elijah healed a Syrian general and Elisha provided food for a Gentile widow and her son and raised her son back to life. I suspect the anger they felt was because Jesus had taken or was likely to take God’s favors to others beyond Nazareth. He might show his favor and love even to those who were not Jews.

    I think the lesson here for us is that we subconsciously think we should get preferential treatment from God if we live the way he taught us. In other words, if I do what God wants, he should do what I want. It’s true, not only do we see that bad things happen to good people, but good things happen to bad people. We think it shouldn’t be that way. But in this life it is. It is in the next life that all will be made fair. Then again, when we stop and think about it and count our blessings, we discover we have been greatly blessed. I always enjoy Archbishop Pilarczyk’s answer whenever anyone asks him “How are you doing Archbishop?” He always answers “better than I deserve.” The ways of God are sometimes mysterious, we can’t always find the answers as to why things happen and that’s why Jesus insists that we have faith in him.

    How did he get away from the crowd who were going to throw him off of a cliff? Luke gives us no clue. It just wasn’t his time – but remember even his time of undeserved suffering would come – but so would his resurrection. Amen.

^{^{Given

October 29, 2016



R.
Please spread blessed holy water

(You can also mix Jesus and Mary water

with your blessed Holy Water if you have it.)

in your yard, around your house,

in the state you live in.


    And ask God to bless your state


Ask God to bless the United States

Pray all prayers through the intercession of

Our Lady of CLEAR – WATER.

Ask the Lady of CLEAR - WATER

to help with the blessed water.

Mary has appeared to me for 22 years,

in Ohio and Florida.}}