Saint + Elizabeth + Ann + Seton + Parish

‘No’ is not the answer we expect. We expect generosity. We expect outstanding generosity: ‘Yes, please, take all the oil you want.’ The disturbing part of this is that the parable is not about generosity. The parable is about the end of time and the return of the Lord. 

The Psalmist describes integrity as someone who stands by his oath even to his hurt or to put it another way, makes firm commitments and does not renege on his promise (15:4). Integrity is someone who is willing to say, ‘I was wrong.’ Integrity is helping others at a cost to ourselves. The test of integrity is when the heat is on––when we are under pressure.Download Transcript

Everything you do today, be a saint.

You may have heard it said that love liberates. It’s not just a metaphor. When people say that love liberates, it’s not simply a metaphor. It’s real. True loves liberates an individual, it liberates a community , and, believe me, it liberates a culture. And that’s precisely why, in our readings today, we now see Jesus reducing everything about religion and religiosity to love of God and the love of neighbor. 

This faith of ours isn’t an academic discipline. Yes, it’s helpful to learn, helpful to know, helpful to study, helpful to have knowledge of its history, background, and meaning, but unless you can love, unless you can put this faith into practice in love, it matters not at all. 

In the first reading tonight, we hear the exhortation, ‘You shall not abuse the sojourner, the alien, the stranger. You shall not do him wrong, for you yourselves were once aliens and strangers in the land of Egypt. 

Before we were born, God knew every one of us. He knows our name. He knows what our days hold. He knows when the last chapter of our life on earth will end. 

Remember we heard Adam say, ‘It’s not me; it’s this woman.’ And the woman says, ‘It’s not me.’ … You can just imagine, my dear brothers and sisters, after that dialog, that very evening, in our context of today—when they got back home—what do you think Adam would have said to Eve? Or what do you think Eve would have said to Adam? ‘Why are you accusing me to God? I didn’t do it.’ And therefore there is the need for reconciliation, to reconcile us to one another. 

Where does your mind spend most of its time? Tearing yourself apart worrying about the woes and troubles of the world — and there are certainly enough of them to strangle yourself in worry — or reinforcing hope and strength and virtue by focusing on whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise?Download Transcript

In the scheme of things in your life and in my life, where is God located? In the things going on in your life, as we are trying to balance a lot of things in life: our life’s ambitions, our life’s dreams. Where is God located? 

The first lie and the first sin were the same: to deny the dignity of woman and man as human beings, to betray their worth as created by God and breathing the very breath of God, to diminish their meaning as persons fashioned by God’s hands.Download Transcript

You know the good news? The Lord’s vineyard is not a gated vineyard. It’s an open vineyard. And so when you change your mind at 4 pm and you want to go into the vineyard, come on in! You change your mind at 6 pm, come on in! Because his mercy is open. His invitation is open. 

Those who started to work early and worked all day were paid the promised day’s wage. Those who worked half a day were paid a day’s wage. Those who worked the last hour of the day were paid a day’s wage. That is the mercy of God. No matter when we turn to him––as a child or as an older adult––there is full forgiveness and the gift of eternal life.Download Transcript

What does ‘Mass’ mean? It comes to us from the very charge we’re given at the end of Mass: Ite, missa est. It’s the past participle of ‘to be sent.’ It’s to remind us of that service aspect–that what we do here continues out there. It cannot be contained within walls, just as He could not be contained. 

 Jesus chose … to be related to all of us who bear His name in baptism by water and the Holy Spirit. That’s His family.

One of the difficulties with our mission as Christians in the world is understanding how I, as a frail, broken, repetitive sinner, can ever be a witness to the goodness of God. And how can I instruct another to turn away from sins which I myself have committed, perhaps recently? How can I do that? 

One fundamental question that people who study love and relationships try to answer is why relationships break down. Regardless of what explanation somebody has as to why relationships break down, there is something at least we can all agree about: Relationships can be nourished and broken relationships can be healed. 

Sin makes us small—it focuses on our smallness: our small wants, our small desires and passions, a small world we construct around ourselves. Grace connects us to God’s majesty in the vast universe. It enlarges us, teaches us to have an outsized hope. Sin arises from small thoughts and ambitions—me! me!—but grace opens our visions to vast horizons, all touched with the grandeur of God.Download Transcript

You and I are together for three nights. So I thought we would look at that Man in the tomb with us for 40 hours in three ways. Tonight: Jesus of Nazareth—God made man, a human being who walked our dust and died our death. Tomorrow: Jesus Christ, the Church. And finally, then, on Tuesday night, Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, the Blessed Sacrament. 

We’d like to believe God will never ask of us anything that is unpleasant. The witness of the Scriptures and the Faith proclaimed by the Church tell us that is not true. Paul gives the contrast in his letter to the Romans: offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God…. Do not conform yourselves to this age, but be transformed…. Jesus tells us that true life comes through dying to the old life. It’s the message of the cross.Download Transcript