TPA26 - Stewardship and God's Way
I know this word causes people to cringe and clench their knuckles, but it has a beautiful Biblical history. It comes from recognizing that God is the true owner of all that is, and we are simply allowed to use it. Let us use the gifts we have been given for the glory of God and the good of our brothers and sisters. Stewardship brings true freedom, and freedom lets us fly. (the story is from Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, Ch. 3)
[Readings]
To subscribe with iTunes, go to the iTunes menu, click Advanced > Subscribe to Podcast..., and paste this link http://homily.mypodcast.com/rss.xml
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Monday, September 22, 2008
Financial Crisis
Fr Benjamin
My brother and I have commented from time to time about the United States. The latest example that something is not right in our great country is the deepening financial crisis that has been plaguing America.
Underlying the financial crisis is the simple fact that our companies have been looking for short-term profits instead of long term stability and success. Part of this was the profligate offerings of long lines of credit, unjustified by the person's real ability to pay back the debt. In the long term, a person whose life is financially stable offers much greater benefits to the country and the economy, but in the short term a lot of money can be made from someone's excessive spending.
This same short term thinking is clearly driving the Government proposal to spend 700 billion dollars (a little more than $100 for every person on earth). The money will be spent to buy up bad debt from American lenders. While in the short term this might stabilize the economy, the long term danger of this course of action is staggering. These are debts that makes even the riskiest of Wall Street bankers weak in the knees. Apparently Washington is full of more risk-takers than New York. Probably the politicians don't believe the government will ever be called to the carpet to cover these losses, which is exactly the thinking that got our financial planners into the mess they are in.
The government believes it can pull our financial sector out of the quicksand that it has fallen into, but there is a real risk that it will be pulled in instead. Our poor government hopes to keep on bluffing until it arrives at financial stability, before some child cries out "But that emperor has no money!"
My brother and I have commented from time to time about the United States. The latest example that something is not right in our great country is the deepening financial crisis that has been plaguing America.
Underlying the financial crisis is the simple fact that our companies have been looking for short-term profits instead of long term stability and success. Part of this was the profligate offerings of long lines of credit, unjustified by the person's real ability to pay back the debt. In the long term, a person whose life is financially stable offers much greater benefits to the country and the economy, but in the short term a lot of money can be made from someone's excessive spending.
This same short term thinking is clearly driving the Government proposal to spend 700 billion dollars (a little more than $100 for every person on earth). The money will be spent to buy up bad debt from American lenders. While in the short term this might stabilize the economy, the long term danger of this course of action is staggering. These are debts that makes even the riskiest of Wall Street bankers weak in the knees. Apparently Washington is full of more risk-takers than New York. Probably the politicians don't believe the government will ever be called to the carpet to cover these losses, which is exactly the thinking that got our financial planners into the mess they are in.
The government believes it can pull our financial sector out of the quicksand that it has fallen into, but there is a real risk that it will be pulled in instead. Our poor government hopes to keep on bluffing until it arrives at financial stability, before some child cries out "But that emperor has no money!"
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Fr. Joel's homily for Sep. 21
TPA25 - Don't solve it, just Receive It
Today Jesus tells a parable about how people who only worked an hour in the kingdom receive as much pay as though who worked 12 hours. Don't try to figure out God's mind, instead just be grateful for his generosity. No work can earn the Kingdom of God anyway so we should just be happy that God loves us and he will take care of us.
[Readings]
[iTunes]
Today Jesus tells a parable about how people who only worked an hour in the kingdom receive as much pay as though who worked 12 hours. Don't try to figure out God's mind, instead just be grateful for his generosity. No work can earn the Kingdom of God anyway so we should just be happy that God loves us and he will take care of us.
[Readings]
[iTunes]
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
The American Dream
Fr. Joel
I am proud to be an American. I know I was born in the best country in the world. Sometimes I am reminded of all the wars in the world and the starving children, so I change the channel and order a pizza. It's America -- we shouldn't have to worry about stuff like that. My grandfather left one of those poor countries to come here. He worked hard and managed to scrape together enough to raise a family. My father worked harder and did even better. I dream big -- I want to work as little as possible and get rich doing it. Is that too much to ask? It's a free country, after all. I just want a few simple things. I want to eat like a pig and still have the body of a god. I don't want to watch my diet or exercise or anything like that, but I expect health care to fix anything that goes wrong with me. I want to live somewhere pretty like a hillside or a sea coast, and then when a wildfire or flood destroys it, I expect someone to build my house back again for me. I want to live beyond my means and spend more than I make, live in a big house I can't afford and drive a great big car, or two or three. A hybrid car, that is. Yes sir, it's a free country. And thanks to technology, one day we will be a guilt-free country.
Why am I so frustrated?
And lonely?
Maybe the Internet will fix that.
I am proud to be an American. I know I was born in the best country in the world. Sometimes I am reminded of all the wars in the world and the starving children, so I change the channel and order a pizza. It's America -- we shouldn't have to worry about stuff like that. My grandfather left one of those poor countries to come here. He worked hard and managed to scrape together enough to raise a family. My father worked harder and did even better. I dream big -- I want to work as little as possible and get rich doing it. Is that too much to ask? It's a free country, after all. I just want a few simple things. I want to eat like a pig and still have the body of a god. I don't want to watch my diet or exercise or anything like that, but I expect health care to fix anything that goes wrong with me. I want to live somewhere pretty like a hillside or a sea coast, and then when a wildfire or flood destroys it, I expect someone to build my house back again for me. I want to live beyond my means and spend more than I make, live in a big house I can't afford and drive a great big car, or two or three. A hybrid car, that is. Yes sir, it's a free country. And thanks to technology, one day we will be a guilt-free country.
Why am I so frustrated?
And lonely?
Maybe the Internet will fix that.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Fr. Joel's homily for Sep. 14
Feast of the Exultation of the Cross
The Cross -- it was a brutal method of torture and execution, even worse than an electric chair or gallows or guillotine. But Jesus endured it because he loves us, which transformed the cross from a sign of despair into a sign of hope and love. There is power in the cross capable of wining victory over any evil.
[Readings][iTunes]
The Cross -- it was a brutal method of torture and execution, even worse than an electric chair or gallows or guillotine. But Jesus endured it because he loves us, which transformed the cross from a sign of despair into a sign of hope and love. There is power in the cross capable of wining victory over any evil.
[Readings][iTunes]
Sunday, September 7, 2008
When does life begin?
Fr. Benjamin Sember
One issue that has been in the news recently is the question of when life begins. This sounds like a question to be answered by the philosophers or by scientists, but recently the question has been posed to politicians and bantered around on the internet.
For Christians, this question has a special meaning because God has declared that human life is precious to Him. Each human life is unique and unrepeatable, modeled after God himself so that we are made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26, 9:5-6). Just as many cultures believe that God has a unique connection to certain temples and sacred places, we believe that God has a unique connection to each living human person, and that they are sacred to Him. This means that an offense against human life is an offense against God. The book of Genesis says that spilled blood, “cries out to God.” Thus one of the fundamental laws of God is, "You shall not kill" (Ex. 20:13).
Clearly we do not want to kill or harm anyone who is sacred to God, and if every person is sacred to God, it places a great responsibility on our shoulders. So asking, “When human life begins?” is very important because it indicates the limits of that responsibility.
There has never been a doubt about the sacredness of life during pregnancy. The early Christians believed that human life had to be protected and favored from the beginning and through all it stages of development. These sources include Tertullian and the Didache. It is obvious that, when a woman becomes pregnant, the life in her is a gift from God, full of possibility and new promise, and to deliberately interrupt that new life is an offense against the Creator who gives life.
The so-called “lack of consensus” in Catholic circles was not on the protection of life but about the question of ensoulment, that is, when the developing fetus receives a human soul. Some authors said it happened at conception, others said a few weeks later (e.g. when the fertilized egg could no longer form into twins). This discussion, however, never impact the Church’s judgment on procured abortion, which was always considered a grave sin. The difference was, Church law used to treat an abortion more severely if it happened later in pregnancy because the fetus was more obviously a child and so the gravity seemed more serious. Even supporters of abortion like Nancy Pelosi accept this logic today. Despite her insistence on a woman’s choice, she is reluctant to support “late term” abortions because the fetus is more obviously a child.
However, modern science lets us see clearly that the fetus is not a part of the mother and it is not a seed from the father. Before conception we are only dealing with egg and sperm, part of the bodies of the woman and man. After conception there is a unique human life, distinct from its father and its mother, needing only a supportive environment to grow to birth and beyond. Responding to this, the Church abolished any legal distinction between early and late abortion.
When does life begin? It begins at conception, and pregnancy involves not only the woman but also the child. I should add that, with all the discussion about the child in the pro-life circles, the mother is often forgotten. A “crisis pregnancy” frequently involves a woman or girl who is frightened, poorly informed and often without the support of a family or community willing to help her. It is easy to blame a woman for an abortion, but a high number of deliberate abortions indicates that our society is not open to new life. Since we really believe that life is sacred, we should work to make our families and communities places where each human life is welcomed and valued.
More information can be found online at the Vatican and on www.usccb.org.
One issue that has been in the news recently is the question of when life begins. This sounds like a question to be answered by the philosophers or by scientists, but recently the question has been posed to politicians and bantered around on the internet.
For Christians, this question has a special meaning because God has declared that human life is precious to Him. Each human life is unique and unrepeatable, modeled after God himself so that we are made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26, 9:5-6). Just as many cultures believe that God has a unique connection to certain temples and sacred places, we believe that God has a unique connection to each living human person, and that they are sacred to Him. This means that an offense against human life is an offense against God. The book of Genesis says that spilled blood, “cries out to God.” Thus one of the fundamental laws of God is, "You shall not kill" (Ex. 20:13).
Clearly we do not want to kill or harm anyone who is sacred to God, and if every person is sacred to God, it places a great responsibility on our shoulders. So asking, “When human life begins?” is very important because it indicates the limits of that responsibility.
There has never been a doubt about the sacredness of life during pregnancy. The early Christians believed that human life had to be protected and favored from the beginning and through all it stages of development. These sources include Tertullian and the Didache. It is obvious that, when a woman becomes pregnant, the life in her is a gift from God, full of possibility and new promise, and to deliberately interrupt that new life is an offense against the Creator who gives life.
The so-called “lack of consensus” in Catholic circles was not on the protection of life but about the question of ensoulment, that is, when the developing fetus receives a human soul. Some authors said it happened at conception, others said a few weeks later (e.g. when the fertilized egg could no longer form into twins). This discussion, however, never impact the Church’s judgment on procured abortion, which was always considered a grave sin. The difference was, Church law used to treat an abortion more severely if it happened later in pregnancy because the fetus was more obviously a child and so the gravity seemed more serious. Even supporters of abortion like Nancy Pelosi accept this logic today. Despite her insistence on a woman’s choice, she is reluctant to support “late term” abortions because the fetus is more obviously a child.
However, modern science lets us see clearly that the fetus is not a part of the mother and it is not a seed from the father. Before conception we are only dealing with egg and sperm, part of the bodies of the woman and man. After conception there is a unique human life, distinct from its father and its mother, needing only a supportive environment to grow to birth and beyond. Responding to this, the Church abolished any legal distinction between early and late abortion.
When does life begin? It begins at conception, and pregnancy involves not only the woman but also the child. I should add that, with all the discussion about the child in the pro-life circles, the mother is often forgotten. A “crisis pregnancy” frequently involves a woman or girl who is frightened, poorly informed and often without the support of a family or community willing to help her. It is easy to blame a woman for an abortion, but a high number of deliberate abortions indicates that our society is not open to new life. Since we really believe that life is sacred, we should work to make our families and communities places where each human life is welcomed and valued.
More information can be found online at the Vatican and on www.usccb.org.
Fr. Joel's homily for Sep. 7
TPA23 - Community of Love
We can sum up all the commandments with one simple phrase: "Love your neighbor as yourself." Loving our neighbor is the essence of what it means to be a Christian church. We could define ourselves as a Community that receives God's healing love and lives it. St. Raymond Nonnatus shows us what it means to keep on loving even when someone has wronged us.
[Readings][iTunes]
We can sum up all the commandments with one simple phrase: "Love your neighbor as yourself." Loving our neighbor is the essence of what it means to be a Christian church. We could define ourselves as a Community that receives God's healing love and lives it. St. Raymond Nonnatus shows us what it means to keep on loving even when someone has wronged us.
[Readings][iTunes]
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Subscribe to Fr. Ben's Podcast
Subscribe to Fr. Joel's Podcast
Subscribe using iTunes