Last week’s readings and St. Luke’s Gospel reminded us that we are called to bring God’s love and peace to all we meet. Our Baptism brings the fire of the Holy Spirit into our being so that we can spread God’s word toward purification of sinfulness and acceptance of God’s Kingdom. Today, we add another dimension in which we reach out to the whole world even in times of great difficulty because no one is to be excluded from the Kingdom of God. Salvation is offered to everyone.
In the realm of relationships each one is unique even though there are identifying traits that psychologist, psychiatrists and scientists have data that often proves the outcomes are consistent no matter the person involved. The uniqueness comes when we interact with one another and the outcome produces or provides an avenue of action to change something for better or worse.
Dear Friends in Christ,
I would like to present a three-part article concerning Ecumenism—the promotion of the visible unity of the Church.
In this first part, we will reflect on Christ’s call for unity in His high priestly prayer recorded in the Gospel of John. In the second part, we will examine the history of division within the Church, focusing on the Great Schism and the Protestant Reformation. Lastly, we will explore the development of the modern Ecumenical movement throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.
On the last Saturday of July I received a card from the wife of a man I have known for 61 years. After four and half years of suffering from stage four colon cancer he passed. Joe, not his real name, was one of my oldest friends and we considered each other as brothers because neither of us had siblings.
Bishop Kevin Vann shares in a letter to those of faith his thoughts, hopes and beliefs as he prepares for a visit to Rome to visit with our new Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV, his friend and classmate from years past. As he writes: it is truly like going home!
Being a resolute Catholic Christian challenges us to make difficult choices that cause pain in so many areas of our life. Our Gospel and readings today definitely pits our faith in God against a world that denies His very existence. And yet, without that world, we often are unable to survive in some of the very basic areas of providing a livelihood.
Someone once asked me how does one know if they have a good prayer life? I said, “When it is answered, whether you know it or not.”
One of the traits I have noticed about people, myself included, is that we have a curious nature that seeks to learn about the world around us; especially as it relates to others. Initially, it is about looking for things in common. If we find enough we like about someone, we begin to recognize differences by accident or on purpose. When we have satisfied our curiosity, we make a decision to continue in relationship with someone or to go elsewhere.
In mid 1975 I was hired by a national wholesale nursery company as a regional salesman to represent them in the new territory of southern California and Nevada and all of Arizona. In addition, I would continue to handle their firm’s public relations. I closed my public relations/advertising agency and my wife and I sold our home and moved our family of four children under the age of seven from the Chicago area to Southern California.
About every five years or so there is a knock at our front door usually by two young men each nicely dressed in a white shirt, tie, dark colored pants and suspenders. They always have smile on their face, some pamphlets in their hands and sometimes a bible. They introduce themselves by name and tell us they are from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.