Homily for the Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

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Homily for the Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

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Homily for the Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

I was out of town for the weekend, so no recording.

We know the importance of persistence: if there’s some goal you want to reach, you will receive it if you are persistent in seeking that goal. Those who have played or currently play sports, you know that if you’re going to be successful in a sport, you need to persist in working out and practicing the skills needed for that sport. In our jobs, careers, and businesses, we know that success in those positions and businesses come when we work hard and do our best at those positions. Persistence is vital to success in the world.

Persistence is also just as vital in spiritual life. In the Gospel parable today, Our Lord tells us that the man with the visitor “will get up to give him whatever he needs because of his persistence.” It’s not a coincidence that this parable comes right after Jesus teaches his disciples how to pray with the Our Father. Our Lord is telling us that we need to persist in prayer, just as we need to persist in anything important in our lives.

Jesus reinforces this when he says, “ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be open to you.” He doesn’t say that asking and knocking are only done once. Instead, he tells us that we need to be persistent in seeking God’s will. If we wish to ask and knock, we need to seek, and this seeking is an on-going process in our lives that should never stop.

Persistence is so important in the spiritual life that we need to be praying daily, seeking God’s will. If we are not daily entering into prayer, we are not growing in the spiritual life. Attending Mass weekly — or less frequently for too many Catholics — is not enough to nurture our spiritual lives.

If we want to see what persistence in prayer looks like, we can use Abraham in our first reading as the example. Abraham knew of God’s plans for the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, and wanted to do what he could to save innocent lives in the cities. So, to convince God not to kill those innocent, he “bargained” God down from 50 innocent people to 45 to 40 to 30 to 20 to asking if God would spare the cities if there were only 10 innocent people.

This is the persistence we need to have. As Catholics, we should be “storming Heaven” with our prayers. Our prayers should be frequent and many. If we are persistent in our prayers, we will achieve the goal of the spiritual life: the Holy Spirit guiding us to eternal life. As Our Lord says in the Gospel: “If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in Heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?” God wants to give us the Holy Spirit to lead and guide us. We only have to ask.

So, we have our goal in the spiritual life. May we exercise the persistence in prayer necessary to achieve that goal, because, as Jesus said, “For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” May we ask, seek, and knock so that we may receive, find, and have the door to eternal life opened for us.

Homily for the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

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Homily for the Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

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Don’t be afraid to evangelize!

As I posted yesterday, I recently received my ordered copy of The New Evangelization and You: Be Not Afraid by Greg Willits. Over the last two evenings, I was able to do a quick read-through and develop some initial impressions.

The New Evangelization should be the priority of every Catholic. Each and every one of us should be seeking to evangelize our family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, and even those you might bump into once in a blue moon. In short, it should be our goal for everyone to enter the Catholic Church and come to know Christ.

If this sounds overwhelming, that’s because it is. In fact, I would venture that one of the major reasons why more Catholics don’t seek to share their faith is because they don’t know where to start. Of course, the #1 reason is likely due to fear: fear of rejection by family and friends, fear of mocking and insults, fear of being seen as a Holy Roller and Jesus Freak. Second to that, only barely, is the feeling that Catholics don’t know the faith well enough to share.

Greg answers all these objections and more within this short book (149 pages, 5 of which are footnotes). His writing is very simple and easy to read, yet challenging and instructive. If you’ve heard Greg on Sirius radio or the podcasts he’s done with his wife, Jennifer, you know the sense of humor that comes naturally to him. That humor comes out in the book (even right at the beginning in the Introduction which includes a debate between him and his wife over reading the Introduction of books).

A major aspect of this book is to challenge and encourage Catholics to seriously think about their faith and discover ways to both learn about, live and share that faith. Those familiar with NewEvangelizers.com, a non-profit run by Greg and Jennifer dedicated to the New Evangelization, will recognize immediately the major theme in the book: Catholics need to “know the faith, live the faith, and share the faith.” Greg challenges Catholics to not think of evangelization as a three-step process: first I’m going to learn all I can about the faith, then I will use that knowledge to live the faith, finally, once those two are in the bag, I will share the faith. Instead, Greg states that all three need to be done at once. You can’t know the faith without living it. You can’t live the faith without sharing it. You can’t share the faith without knowing it. All three work together.

Obviously, reading the book over two evenings means that I gave it a very light reading, and Greg’s writing style works with that style of reading. This does not mean that the book does not go much deeper than that. In fact, it’s worth reading twice: once for the quick overview, then going slower and entering into a much deeper study and reflection on the material, especially on the series of questions given at the end of each chapter. There are also prayers at the end of each chapter which focus on various aspects of the New Evangelization, and ask God for the grace to grow in that aspect.

This isn’t just a theoretical work, but chalk full of practical suggestions and examples. Every chapter features a short article on a figure or group involved in the day-to-day work of the New Evangelzation. Those featured include Lisa Hendey, Jason Elizondo and Austin Catholic New Media, Sarah Reinhard and more — including a number I was not familiar with, but will make the effort to discover their work.

The most practical chapter would have to be Chapter 10, which is called “A Year of New Evangelizing”. This chapter contains a list of 52 ways we can know the faith, 52 ways we can live the faith and 52 ways we can share the faith. Some of them are simple: listen to Catholic radio, invite your priest over for dinner (which I whole-heartedly endorse), get a holy card of your favorite saint and pin or tape it up in your office or cubicle. Some are more difficult: study Theology of the Body, help out at a local homeless shelter, make a video about why you love being Catholic and share online. Each item on these lists are practical, concrete ways that every Catholic can “know the faith, live the faith, and share the faith.”

Greg reminds us that we are all called to evangelization. This is not just for the “professional Catholics” (priests, bishops, religious, and lay people who work for the Church), but each and every one of us received this commission to evangelize when we received the Sacrament of Baptism. As members of the Body of Christ, we are called and sent to show Christ to the world and lead others to Him.

If you’re looking for a simple instruction manual on how to “do” the New Evangelization, Greg has written it. Parishes and individuals should pick up this resource to read, study, and implement it in their communities and families. I know I plan on giving it a far deeper study and reflection.

Judging a book by its cover

Anyone who likes to read should be familiar with the old saying “Never judge a book by its cover”. Well, contrary to that old maxim, I’m going to do just that. I’ve recently received the newly-published book The New Evangelization and You: Be Not Afraid by Greg Willits. I haven’t even cracked the cover, yet know it’s going to be worth reading due to the qualifications of its author.

If I were to make a list of people in the Catholic world of those would be best qualified to write a book on the New Evangelization, Greg Willits would be high on that list. Greg and his wife Jennifer have spent many years involved in various aspects of evangelization, especially using the new forms of media available over the Internet. From the Rosary Army to podcasting to That Catholic Show to broadcasting on Sirius Radio’s Catholic Channel and now running the New Evangelizers website, Greg and Jennifer have lots of experience in many aspects of the New Evangelization. In fact, Greg and Jennifer just mentioned in their most recent The Catholics Next Door podcast that they have been running the Rosary Army for 10 years. It’s obvious that the New Evangelization is a passion for them.

So, with that background, it’s clear that this is a book worth reading. Time to stop looking at the cover, and start learning about the New Evangelization from one of the masters.

Homily for the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

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Homily for the Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

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Homily for the Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time

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