29 Sunday Apr 2018
As part of spiritual direction, we went on a three-day retreat to discern how the Holy Spirit wants to use our marriage to be a blessing to others. We were directed to study the Sunday Gospel readings during the Easter Season as they focus on different aspects of the disciples being sent out on mission. The Gospel reading for today, the Fifth Sunday of Easter, is from John, Chapter 15, the “I AM the Vine” discourse of Jesus to His disciples at the Last Supper.
22 Sunday Apr 2018
We live in a time when there is confusion as to what constitutes a marriage. St. John Paul II pinpointed the heart of the tragedy of the breakdown of the family: “the eclipse of the sense of God and man, typical of a social and cultural climate dominated by secularism” (Veritatis Splendor, 21). Secularism in the Western world worships egotistical individualism which places the needs and desires of an individual person above those of the society and even the family. It is “my needs, my wants, my pleasure” at the expense of what is best for the good of society as a whole.
15 Sunday Apr 2018
Tags
During Lent I read the Manual for Men, a book geared for those who are soldiers for Christ and His Church. These men battle for sanctity in their lives and in the lives of their family. The evil one is attacking families because marriage images Christ’s love for His bride, the Church. It is a battle that men must fight and win.
08 Sunday Apr 2018
Tags
Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. Luke 6:36
According to the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church: “The family, is so to speak, the domestic church” (11). It is in the family where we first learn that God is “Love and Mercy itself” (Diary of St. Faustina, 1074).
In his homily on the occasion of the canonization of St. Mary Faustina Kowalska, St. John Paul II had this to say about the love and mercy of God:
