People need to learn to receive love. And it is in the warm environment of a home in the environment of a family, that the people learn to be loved. Allow yourself to love. Allow yourself to experience love, kindness, care and understanding, forgiveness.
We need the pure love of the father, of the mother of brothers . . . we need pure love our family. Yes, the family is and needs to be an oasis of love. It is urgent to preserve these oasis of love.
How good it is to be family! How good it is to have the presence of men and women, of adults, of youth and of children! How good it is to have differences… differences of type, of temperment, of opinions of points of view. How good to have to live with the different.
Your Brother
Monsignor Jonas Abib
Translated from Portuguese
Tags: Canção Nova, cancaonova, catholicismanew, Jonas Abib, New Song Community, newsongtv, stbenedictsomerville
I want us to look at today’s gospel. There is an issue there that often we as Americans can feel uncomfortable. You see, we believe in freedom, at least when we grew up we did.
El Capitan in Yosemite
Freedom in the American way of thinking means doing what you want. It also means making you the standard of what is and is not the definition of freedom. That is what we call individualism. If I use that individualism to skydive or to jump off El Capitan, well that is rugged individualism.
However, in today’s gospel we can see a message that most Americans would normally reject. It is the concept of obedience. Remember, you cannot make a movie about a man obeying his superior. In fact, look at some of the great characters in movies and virtually none of them would be considered paragons in obedience.
However, to understand what obedience is all about, especially to us Catholic Americans, let us look at today’s gospel. We see an act of obedience, blind obedience. Jesus tells these fishermen to put their nets out. Peter says that they had been doing that all day with no results. Yet, because the master, whom they have yet to understand is the messiah, says to do it, they do. Every part of their body tells them that this will be a wasted action however, they listen. They act and they find not only results different from what they expected, they find God Himself.
Obedience is an essential part of the Catholic faith, not for obedience sake. What is at stake here is the truth that God offers us, a wisdom that is beyond what you and I can find on our own. If we ignore God’s wisdom and remain obedient to ourselves, we will find ourselves alone. However, if we remain obedient to God, we are not subjecting ourselves to foolishness, we are humbling ourselves before the greatest of all wisdom and we are finding it.
The Calling of St Peter and St. Andrew-J.J. Tissot
Peter finds Christ when he obeys. Others who would have mocked Jesus, claiming to know more about fishing than he, would go without ever knowing Jesus or his wisdom. Indeed, many reject Christ because they are unable to understand obedience. Then they mock those who follow Christ, but they do not know Christ because they cannot understand Him. Those who know Christ can understand the world through a deeper sense of wisdom than those who don’t. We obey Christ and we learn from Him. Those who don’t know Christ may even mock us, but, that is because although they be extremely well educated, they are unable to comprehend the wisdom that Christ gives to us and unable to understand what we know.
It is when we humble ourselves before Christ in obedience that we begin to learn this truth. Then in time the wisdom leads to a whole new vision that others cannot understand. Let us look at this in relation to the big picture.
Where are we? John teaches us that we are in the world, but not of it. Therefore, we are in the world. The world (not creation but that world of self-centered motivation) is Satan’s kingdom, not God’s. Satan has control of it until it passes away. Remember the 23rd Psalm teaches us that we are in the valley of death, following Christ as he leads us through this dangerous place. We obey Christ, not because we look upon him as like the Phantasmic Wizard of Oz, the tyrannic fire centered phantasmic invention, the one not behind the curtain. It is because we recognize Him as our leader through the valley of death.
Many were taught to look upon God as a harsh evil judge seeking to cast people into Hell for the slightest error. That is wrong. This God sacrificed all He could so that no one would end up in Hell. Therefore, He leads us through the valley of death that is part of the realm of the leader of Hell. When we listen to Jesus in obedience, we do so like we would listen to a hired guide taking us through the jungles of the Amazon. If we don’t obey, we can get hurt or die not because we are punished, but because we walked off the path into the valley of death with no one to protect us. If we do obey, we get a powerful experience that will change our lives as we follow Christ to life.
When we obey Christ, we obey the leader who takes us through the valley of death to the eternal life to which we are invited at Baptism. But we must listen or we will turn from the right path and find ourselves
Though I walk through the Valley of Death
alone in the valley of death in the midst of the wolves who seek to consume us to the bones beneath our flesh. Further our obedience has a fruit in a greater wisdom. Jesus teaches us on the way of why He does what He does, of whom we are and whom He is.
You and I, who are considered fools in the eyes of our detractors, have been given the opportunity to understand the world in ways that are profound. That understanding leads to salvation. The door to that understanding is humility and obedience to the wisdom of God. Not obedience to the wayward ideas of rugged individualists or even bad priests or professors. Rather obedience to the person of Jesus Christ who teaches us great truth. Peter learns one other thing through this obedience: God’s infinite mercy, which is ever present. This presents another lesson. We cannot judge ourselves. We will find ourselves unworthy of God’s mercy. Jesus, will find us the same way, but ignores it and reaches out to us anyway.
Again looking to Peter, he recognizes his sinfulness and asks Jesus to leave him. Instead, throughout his life, from that moment on, his obedience teaches him how merciful Jesus is, despite his failings. Where is the one who is unmerciful. You will find him personified in the Phantasmic Wizard of Oz. He also is best defined as Satan. An unmerciful tyrannical bully who seeks our total destruction. Whereas Jesus is the Loving king who seeks our salvation. Understand Jesus love in this way is powerful and great. Let us celebrate it. In the life of Peter and in our lives. When we are obedient to Christ, we by default will grow in wisdom.
Photo Credit:
All images public domain
top and bottom from www.public-domain-image.com
Middle: www.brooklynmuseum.org
Tags: 5th Sunday Ordinary Time, Canção Nova, Catholic, catholicismanew, Homily, Lk 5:1-11, New Song Community, newsongtv, stbenedictsomerville
Imagine a tightrope walker maneuvering across the audience in a circus. He has his balance pole and carefully he walks one step in front of the other as he goes from the left side of the arena to the right. Everyone looks up; some crane their necks to see the man who is so daring. Under the man is a bit of a dampener on the experience. It is a safety net. Required by law, the safety net reminds us that even if he falls, he not be hurt. We are happy to see that, but we realize the risk involved is not to the level it would be if indeed there was no net. The man is doing more than enough to prove His daring, but the state says they want him protected.
That scene also offers us a reflection on the difference between a legal based religion and that one that Christ calls us to live.
When we seek to live the faith only based on what the law says, it is like we are walking across the stadium on the safety net. We are doing the bare minimum that allows us to be called a performer, but what we are doing is not spectacular. Really, the only person who could get away with that in the eyes of the audience is the clown.
If we choose to be the tightrope walker then we are performing in a way that merits the attention we are getting. It takes great skill, practice and determination. Likewise, if we are going to live our faith, we must live above and beyond the minimum required. We must be like the tightrope walker, not like the one who walks across the safety net.
When we live our faith strictly at the legal level, then we really have nothing to offer the world around us. There is no life there and at best we can be dismissed as clowns. Jesus rejected those who lived their lives at that level. The Pharisees followed the letter of the law perfectly, but they did not follow the spirit of the law. They lived at the safety level but not above it. They were doing the bare minimum, even if they felt they were doing more. Jesus pointed out to them that they had nothing to offer to the world.
We need to go far beyond this level if we are going to live our Catholic faith, otherwise we are just clowns.
God bless you,
Fr. Robert J. Carr
Tags: Canção Nova, cancaonova, Catholic, Catholic Action, catholicismanew, Fr. Robert J. Carr, legalism, newsongtv, stbenedictsomerville
The Lord asks us: “That which I ask you is that you love one another”! (John 15:17)
We were created for loving! Loving implies accepting a communion of sincere friendship and gratitude. Loving is making oneself vulnerable, small . . and putting oneself in the attitude of receiving the other in one’s house with his riches and qualities, as well as his poverty and brokenness.
Communion is the place of community, it is the home of belonging one to the other and of making ourselves responsible and friends with one another. (cf. John 15:15)
Let us pledge from today on to make concrete gestures of love to the other as Christ himself taught us.
God does not ask of us excesses, but makes us do the good.” Said St. Teresa.
It is necessary always to ask to God for the birth, growth and the maturity of love in us. We ask the Lord that He may come to help us in our limitations in our interaction with other persons, because it is the quality of our love that makes the difference.
Jesus, I trust in You!
Luzia santiago
Tags: Canção Nova, cancaonova, catholicismanew, loving, Luzia Santiago, New Song Community, newsongtv, stbenedictsomerville
Peace!
I want to share with you that which happened when I was in Rio de Janeiro.
I was participating in an event organized by the mission house of Rio. There was a tea in the afternoon with a marvelous participation of people of the city. I was very happy with the accomodations that I received.
Later, after the event, at 7:00 pm I celebrated a mass for our collaborators from Rio, people who love us and help us in the evangelization contributing financially and with their presence in events that happen in this city.
At the end I saw a child asking me for a minute of my time. I was a little rushed for I was tired and wanted to leave. But I have him a minute nevertheless!
“A Miracle, Father! A miracle happened here.” He spoke to me very emotional. He thanked me for all that I said in the mass and that he was with all plans to kill himself in the previous night. When his wife convinced him to participate in my mass and he said was his last appointment before he killed himself. He continued saying that at that moment his life changed and that the anguish that he was feeling before was returned to Hell.
What blessing it is to received the testimony of the grace of God in the live of this young person!!! Praise be to God!!! through the strength of his wife who invited him to participate in this mass and for the young man to have accepted the invitation. God spoke to his heart. therefore, It was the courage that there when it appeared that nothing could change the situation. God could save and change a life only through an invitation that you made to a person in need.
Thank you for spending the time to read this testimony
BE STRONG IN INVITING YOURS TO GOD!!
GOD BLESS YOU.
Fr. Cleidimar
Translated from Portuguese
Tags: Canção Nova, cancaonova, Cleidimar, New Song Community, newsongtv, testimony
Who is it that does not need a mother? God in His infinite love gives us the mother of all mothers, She is the key to Heaven and she has the most powerful intercession with God the Father. Mary is pure, without sin, silent, gentle, strong, warrior and much more. We are going to ask, joined to grace of being as the mother of Heaven, to have the grace of quieting ourselves in moments of storms and to secure the arm of God and the Cross of Jesus as she did and does even today. We love you Mother, Teach us to be like you!!!
Janjão
Translated from Portuguese
Tags: Canção Nova, cancaonova, catholicismanew, mary, newsongtv, stbenedictsomerville, Virgin Mary