Episode 199 - Everything Will Be Ok, So Weep Not

Pentecost XV 2023

When Jesus says "Weep not", He means trust me, do not give in to despair, do not lose hope, for I am the Resurrection and the life, and I promise to make all things new, even if for a while there will be suffering.

Episode 198 - The Search For Security And Happiness

Pentecost XIV 2023

What we're after is security and happiness. That's what we all want, what we all desire. But in our current condition, we feel this deep insecurity, and everything we do is trying to alleviate this. God made us hungry, that we might hunger for Him. We are vulnerable beings, and God made us vulnerable that we might rely on him.

Episode 197 - Do This and You Will Live

Pentecost XII 2023

Often when one reads a passage in the Bible, the first question we ask is "what is the moral lesson here, how does this passage instruct me to live?" There is nothing wrong with asking those questions, but they are not the first, nor most important questions we should ask when seeking to understand a scriptural passage.

The first and most important question is always theological. What is the Christological significance of this passage? How does this passage reveal Jesus Christ and his saving work? Our parable today of the Good Samaritan is one of the best examples to illustrate what I mean because, while it has an obvious moral message, it has an even more profound Christological revelation.

Episode 196 - God Declares His Power Through His Mercy

Pentecost X 2023

Christ came for the sick, not for the healthy. For sinners, not for the righteous. The only way we are going to experience the power of God in our lives is by seeking his mercy. And the only way we can actually, truly, deeply seek his mercy is to truly recognize our need for it.

Episode 195 - Glory Comes After The Fight

Transfiguration 2023

This is what St. Peter is saying in his second epistle, which was our first reading today, where he speaks of his personal experience when he witnessed Christ's Transfiguration on Mount Tabor. As he writes St. Peter is preparing for his imminent death by crucifixion, when he will put off his tent (you remember he wanted to set up tents on the Mountain). As he prepares for his death, he recalls this event in order to remind the Faithful what they are destined for, what God has promised them- if, and there is an if. If they do certain things.

Episode 194 - Baptism Saves You

Pentecost VI 2023

In your baptism something truly miraculous and powerful took place in your person, something wrought by the Holy Spirit which changed you indelibly. The old sinful man died, and it is completely unnatural for you to continue to behave like you are still that old man. Unnatural but possible. What happened does not function like gravity, it does not impersonally override our will and cooperation, this powerful gift must be embraced daily.

Episode 193 - You Can't Be Righteous Without Keeping The Rules

Pentecost V 2023

True religion is to offer the sacrifice of worship, to fast, pray, give tithes, care for the needy, abstain for sexual impurity, to conform to the family rules in mutual submission and to do it all with the right interior disposition, with true faith, humility, and love.

If you do all the stuff without the right interior disposition, you have false religion. If you try to have the right interior disposition without obedience, you have no religion, and end up with the subjective god of self.

Episode 192 - Parallelisms in Luke's Gospel

Feast of the Visitation of the BVM 2023

John was the greatest born of Woman, the greatest born of Eve who had become barren and cast into the wilderness because of her sin. After a long line of Adams toiling in the wilderness and the pain of childbirth- in the fullness of time, at the watershed of history, the last and greatest descendent of the old Adam was conceived of a barren woman and lived in the desert. And this man John also happened to be the cousin of the New Man Jesus Christ. These two meet today.

Episode 191 - Christ's Parables Tell Us What God Is Like

Pentecost III 2023

We so often read the gospels as moral admonitions. Which is fine, and good, but that is secondary. The gospels are about God, about Jesus Christ, revealing Him to us so that we can know and love Him as He is. The Scriptures are Christological, they reveal Jesus Christ. Take the Good Samaritan for example, people read that parable as a moral tale of how we should behave, but it is first and foremost a parable about what God has done in Christ to redeem us.

Episode 190 - Everything God Has Made Wants Something

Sunday In Octave of Corpus Christie 2023

Receiving Christ in the Divine Sacrament is not the only thing we do in this life. We work, we eat other food, we marry and raise children, we enjoy creation, and rest, we buy and sell and go about our business from day to day. But in all these things we do, we are still seeking Christ, to be close to Him, to please Him, to Know Him in our core.
Copyright 2018