If we do not follow faith but instead choose to follow what everybody thinks, what everybody says, what everybody does, then we find wisdom in the worldly command “take care of #1”. We put ourselves at the center of our lives as opposed to putting Jesus at the center of our lives.
On the one hand, we have Christ’s promise that he will always be with his Church; no matter how powerful those gates of hell may seem – as perhaps they do at times in our own age – he will not abandon us. He will keep us in the truth. What a gift: we can know the truth, he has promised it to his Church – his teaching, the teaching of his Church, is the truth.
On the other hand, he entrusts to Peter the keys, the symbol of the pastoral governance of his Church, a ministry shared in, each in their proper order and degree, by the other apostles, their successors, and their successors’ closest collaborators, priests.
Thank goodness for that first promise, for it means that, no matter how inept we are, he will never allow us to do irreparable damage to the Church!
Some people in our government and in the media say that we’re exaggerating when we talk about religious freedom being threatened. We’re not exaggerating. The actions proposed by our government are real. They threaten our ability as individual Christians to live the way that Jesus wants us live. They threaten the Church’s ability to carry out her mission.
If I were a person of dark skin who spoke another language as my primary language, I would still be fearful of being stopped and detained because of what some might term “reasonable suspicion.
I am hopeful that all eligible young immigrants will sign up for this new policy shift, will pursue their education with renewed vigor, will serve our country with new enthusiasm, and will prove once again that as a nation of immigrants we do not fear them, but we welcome them and walk with them on their journeys.
We have come to a point in Western society where the meaning of marriage is being largely eclipsed by a counterfeit version, by a false idea that marriage is just a matter of adult interests and can be manipulated as a product of arbitrary invention. However, I believe many of our young people, who have experienced firsthand the difficulties of broken families and the absence of a father or a mother, know intuitively that such an understanding of marriage cannot stand the test of time and can only lead to further disappointment and hardships.
The mystery of the Trinity means that we have access to God — all the time. No matter where we are, or what we’re doing — God is with us. Even when we are with others. We can talk to God all day long. Personally. In an intimate conversation. No matter how softly we speak, he still hears us. We can turn to him for help. For inspiration. All the time.
We can wonder sometimes if God is really in charge. But he is! God has a beautiful plan of love for each one of us and for our world. God is unfolding — in the events of history and in our daily lives — what the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls his “economy of salvation.”
God’s plan of love has one goal. He wants to join everything in heaven and on earth in perfect unity in Jesus Christ. He wants you and me — and everyone in the whole world — to share in the glory of his blessed life as the Trinity.
For Greater Glory” reminds all us — especially today — that our religious liberties have been won by the blood of those who have gone before us. We need to honor their witness. We need to make sure that we never take our religious freedom for granted.
Sadly, we’ve accepted the “rules” and restrictions of our secular society. We keep our faith to ourselves. We’re cautious about “imposing” our beliefs on others — especially when it comes to politics. In recent months, our government has started demanding even more — trying to coerce our consciences, so that we deny our religious identity and values. We need to ask for the strength to be Cristeros. By their dying, they show us what we should be living for.
We can’t govern our society on the basis of our self-centered wants. As adults and as citizens, we have a moral obligation to look beyond ourselves. To think about the common good of society. To think about future generations.
Everywhere I go, I’m meeting such strong and faithful young men and women.
They are growing up in good Catholic homes. Their parents brought them to the life of grace in Baptism when they were newborns. They helped prepare them for their first Confessions and Holy Communion. Now that their children are young adults, these parents are making sure they’re ready for this next step in their Christian maturity.
For me, these encounters have been a beautiful reminder of how our Catholic faith is born and nurtured in the heart of the family.
Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney: Both of you have an obligation to spell out in detail your vision and plans on how to deal with the 11 million people in our midst who need to be brought out of the shadows. Please, no cliches, no rhetorical phrases. Give us a plan that begins with the positive aspects of our immigrant history, and which has particulars and time-lines.
Pentecost is one day in history. But it shows our whole human destiny. Pentecost reveals that the Catholic Church was what God wanted all along, since the creation of the world.
What’s important is not our weakness. God will always give his graces to make us grow stronger in love — if we let him.
