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Devoting Time to God
Listen to the Sunday Readings! (hopefuly by Satuday morning) |
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Twenty-third week of Ordinary Time ~ use your green candle
The Novena of the Seven Sorrows of Mary begins Saturday, September 6, 2010.
Please join us! (See below for details)
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Please add Coming Home Catholic to your safe senders list.
| Prayer of the Week |
Human Dignity
This Saturday is the anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington D.C. Why not take 5 minutes to reflect on your own life? The Church teaches us that every individual has dignity and worth, and is made in God's image. Do you recognize and appreciate the gifts God has given you? Do you recognize your own dignity and worth? How do you reflect God's love for you"
Then take an additional 5 minutes to reflect on the life of someone you do not like. Can you find the dignity and worth in that person? Can you, even deep down, find the image of God in that person?
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| Living our Faith |
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SIN & VIRTUE
We are starting back to school, so we believe a refresher in avoiding sin and practicing virtue is timely.
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Deadly Sins |
Human and Theological Virtues |
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Anger |
Fortitude |
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Gluttony |
Temperance |
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Greed |
Justice |
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Sloth |
Prudence |
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Pride |
Faith |
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Envy |
Hope |
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Lust |
Charity |
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| Deadly Sin: Sloth |
Sloth is a sluggishness of the mind and body that refuses to do something good. It can destroy one's spiritual life because there is no desire to do something for the sake of love and charity. It shows itself in despair, faint-heartedness, and a sluggishness about understanding and obeying the commandments.
Sloth allows one to ignore the messy bedroom or allow another person to clean up one's own mess. Sloth permits bad manners, poor grades, junk-food meals, and weeds in the garden because anything good is not worth the effort. It even allows one to not listen at Mass, or, worse yet, to skip that hour a week of thanking God for the incredible gifts He has given us.
St. Thomas Aquinas referred to sloth as "an oppressive sorrow which so weighs upon a man's mind that he wants to do nothing." Nowadays we call it tolerance. It is easier to tolerate what is wrong than to commit oneself to making a choice and defending the choice of what is right.
Sloth is often disguised by busyness. "I got you a gift card because I'm so busy." How often is the true statement, "I got you a gift card because it is easier than getting close enough to you to understand what you enjoy and what you need, and also taking the risk that my choice may not please you."?
"I cannot find time to pray," is another excuse of sloth. In reality, prayer requires a commitment to a relationship with God. All relationships require time, effort, energy, and giving up of oneself. A relationship with God means completely baring oneself, recognizing the faults and weaknesses that are completely visible to God, and asking for help to overcome them. A relationship with God means allowing ourselves to be loved totally, completely, and without fail. It means accepting that our earthly lives are short, but still hoping for eternal life in the future.
The sin of sloth is not a vacation nor enjoying leisure time. It is feeling nothing. In her essay entitled "The Other Six Deadly Sins" Dorothy Leigh Sayers summed up the sin of sloth like this:
- Believing in nothing
- Caring for nothing
- Seeking to know nothing
- Enjoying nothing
- Loving nothing
- Hating nothing
- Finding purpose in nothing
- Living for nothing
- Remaining alive because there is nothing to die for
How can we overcome the sin of sloth? Not through busyness nor through nothingness, but by resting in God rather than in ourselves, and giving lovingly to others for the mutual benefit of every one of us.
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| Human Virtue: Prudence |
| Prudence is the gift that allows us to figure out what is good and then figure out how to achieve that good. (Our example of this is to not say something mean to your sibling when you feel he or she deserves it!) |
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| According to our catechism, prudence "is the virtue that disposes practical reason to discern our true good in every circumstance..." Thanks to prudence we can be sure to achieve good and avoid evil. |
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| Saints to Celebrate |
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Use your green candle Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday to celebrate Ordinary Time
- Wednesday, September 8 use a white candle for the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. When Mary was born her parents must have been overjoyed. We, too, should celebrate her birth with complete joy. She has shown us how to humble ourselves and accept the Will of God. It is the acceptance of that Will which will lead us to ultimate joy. Happy Birthday, Mary!
- Thursday, September 9 use a white candle for the memorial of St. Peter Claver, the 16th century priest who served black slaves in South America. He was a vocal opponent of the slave trade, as well as a loving priest who served the most vulnerable people he knew. St. Peter Claver is the patron saint of black missions.
A solemnity is a day of greatest importance. The celebration starts the evening before the actual solemnity. Easter is our most important solemnity. A feast is the next most important day. It commemorates Mary, the apostles, martyrs and other saints, and the events associated with them. Mass readings often reflect the special feast day. A memorial is a special day, but often an optional celebration. The scripture readings for Mass may or may not be specially selected for the memorial.
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| Devotion of the Month |
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| Start the Week off Right (prepare for the Sunday Scriptures) |
| 23nd Sunday of Ordinary Time |
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Devoting time to God |
We're back in the Book of Wisdom. This book is relatively recent for the Old Testament. It was written only 100 years before the birth of Jesus, although its words were composed to represent the wisdom of Solomon. The author certainly succeeded! This week's passage reminds us that we mortals do not really understand the "big picture." It is only by accepting the gift of God's Wisdom that our way becomes clear. Hopefully, even if we do not understand it at the time, we can recognize God's presence in retrospect!
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St. Paul's letter to Philemon shows us the surprising directions in which God's Wisdom can take us. Philemon was a slave owner, Onesimus was his runaway slave who may have escaped after robbing Philemon. Onesimus met Paul and converted to Christianity. Paul asked Philemon to take Onesimus back, not as a slave, but as a Christian brother. That must have been quite a shock considering that slavery was an acceptable practice at that time.
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| The Gospel gives us the greatest challenge. We must hate our family if we are to follow God. This statement makes most of us feel quite uncomfortable; Matthew's version (10:37) is a little easier to hear: "Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me." Regardless of the wording, however, the message is the same. To accept the Wisdom of God means to focus our lives on God. We cannot allow our families, the busyness and the worries of our world, or the possible rejection by people close to us, to take our attention away from God. |
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| School is back in session and our schedules are filling up quickly. Why not take some time this week to plan your schedule. Make sure that Mass, family prayer, individual prayer, and service activities are the top priority. Then fill in the concerts, ball games, and every other activity that comes along. Feel free to turn down the activities that interfere with your time with God. After all, you're less likely to hear God if you do not take the time to listen. |
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| Daily Dose of Scripture (our picks of the week) |
Daily readings for the 23rd Week of Ordinary Time |
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First Reading |
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Gospel |
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Monday
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1 Cor 5:1-8 |
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Lk 6:6-11 |
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Tuesday |
1 Cor 6:1-11 |
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Lk 6:12-19 |
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Wednesday |
Mi 5:1-4a or Rom 8:28-30 |
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Mt 1:1-16, 18-23 |
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Thursday |
1 Cor 8:1b-7, 11-13 |
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Lk 6:27-38 |
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Friday |
1 Cor 9:16-19, 22b-27 |
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Lk 6:39-42 |
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Saturday |
1 Cor 10:14-22
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Lk 6:43-49 |
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- 1 Cor 8:1b-7, 11-13
This week we are in the middle of St. Paul's letter which guides the Corinthians into living lives of faith. He had preached in Corinth for about a year and a half. After he left, the Corinthians started slipping back into their old habits. His letter is intended to point out how they are going in the wrong direction and how they can turn back to the path of faith. Surprisingly, this ancient letter is still quite meaningful for us today.
Verses 1-7 refer to eating meat from sacrificed animals and may not seem very appropriate for us. However, verses 11-13 help it make sense. Paul tells the Corinthians (and us!) that every action must be in the spirit of love of God and neighbor. Even if something is not wrong in itself, but may give others the wrong impression, that initial action becomes wrong. We may hear "it had the appearance of impropriety." If so, that should have been avoided from the start. This reading comes in handy when arguments become painful, either physically or with hurt feelings. "Mom, I didn't mean for her to fall down when I threw the pencil!" doesn't stand up to "Did you throw the pencil out of love?" If an action is not done out of love, it should not be done at all.
- Lk 6:39-42
This week we start on the Gospel of Luke. Luke was probably a disciple of St. Paul. He did not know Jesus personally, and probably did not know much about Judaism. His message is targeted at Gentiles (non-Jews), and stresses the dignity of women, the poor, the sick, the lowly.
This is our second week in the Gospel of Luke. We like this reading because it shows that even our modern expressions come from the Bible. Jesus teaches about the problems of the "blind leading the blind," and He especially targets hypocrites. It's easy to see the faults of others, but do we recognize our own faults? Do we evaluate our own behavior and seek to improve it, or do we rely on blaming others for problems? Jesus puts it pretty bluntly, "How can you say to your brother, 'Brother, let me remove the splinter in your eye,' when you do not even notice the wooden beam in your own?" It's a humbling reading.
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| Open that Catechism! |
Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary
Catholics are frequently criticized for their devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Find out why Marian devotions are not only appropriate, but also completely different from worship and adoration, which are saved just for God.
Read about Catholic devotion to to the Blessed Virgin Mary
in paragraph #971 of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church
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