Mass Livestream - Sixth Sunday Of Easter (Mother's Day)

Sunday Mass Livestream - 12th Sunday In Ordinary Time - SoundCloud

Sunday Mass Livestream - First Sunday Of Lent (Feb. 26, 2023)

Since I will be away with the Parish Pastoral Council (PPC) on Retreat this weekend, I will not have the opportunity to preach on the topic of God’s amazing plan and purpose for Holy Matrimony!  It’s a hot topic, often misunderstood, of extraordinary relevance to people today and a source of candid and robust dialogue and debate.

Repost of Sermon on Oct. 3, 2021

The Greatness of Humility 
Humility is highly underrated. It is not the type of virtue that most parents enthusiastically encourage their children to aspire to. Business executives aren’t sending their employees to seminars on the importance of humility in the work place! While coaches and ministers alike are known for exhorting people to greatness; few it seems have much to say about the greatness of being humble. 
Yet, Jesus had plenty to say about the topic in today’s reading: “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled and the one who humbles himself will be exalted”. Humility comes from the root word “humus” which means earth or dirt. It is the virtue by which we are able to see ourselves (and others) as we really are! “Remember, you are dust and to dust you shall return” is our annual reminder each Ash Wednesday. In the creation story from the Book of Genesis, God forms Adam from the clay of the earth. At the end of our lives with all of its successes and accomplishments, where does it all conclude? We are respectfully planted back into the clay of the earth, our final resting place: the cemetery! 
But the good news is that God has greater plans for us than the cemetery and that the key to those plans coming to pass is spending our lives putting God first and then others – NOT ourselves! If you live as if everyone else in the world matters more than you, in the end that world is likely to see you in a favorable light. Even if it doesn’t, certainly, God will. God is great and yet we see in the scriptures that this same God humbles himself making a home with the poor; pardons sinners; welcomes the outcast, washes the feet of his disciples, and leaves as his crowning achievement, dying on a cross! In other words, God shows us that true greatness comes NOT by saying, “Hey look at me” but “Hey, look at THEM” - those all around us in need. If we see and then DO something to help them, then we will have discovered the true path to greatness; a greatness that no cemetery on earth will ever be able to contain!

22nd Ordinary Sunday - The Greatness of Humility - August 28, 2016

29th Sunday In Ordinary Time  10am Mass Will You Drink The Cup That Jesus Drinks

30th Sunday in Ordinary Time 12:30 Sit And Beg Or See And Follow

All Saints Day 2016 - They Let Love In And Then Let Love Win! November 1 2016

32nd Sunday In Ordinary Time  12:30 Mass - The Witness of the Widows - November 6, 2016

33rd Sunday In Ordinary Time  Standing Firm Through Tribulation - November 13, 2016

Each year when we celebrate Christmas, we remind ourselves that at the heart of it all is a gift; an extraordinary and amazing Gift from our extraordinary and amazing God! The Gift, of course, is Jesus. “A child is born to us; a Son is given”. One odd thing about this time of the year though is that we often overlook the obvious: Christmas is Jesus’ birthday not ours! Can you imagine especially as a child having a birthday coming and no one ever asking: “What do YOU want for your birthday?” - and instead just go out and buy gifts for themselves?

So, as a faith community, we choose to ask the obvious question: “Jesus, what do you want for your birthday?” As soon as I ask this question I can’t help but think of the contemporary Christmas song by Mariah Carey which includes the following lyrics: “I don‘t want a lot for Christmas, there is just one thing I need. I don’t care about the presents underneath the Christmas tree. I just want you for my own more than you could ever know. Make my wish come true. All I want for Christmas – is you!” Wow. Could it really be that simple? “I just want you” our Lord says, “just you”. So there you have it. The only question now is whether you will give him the gift that he actually wants or will you sit out this Christmas celebration? I hope you will avoid the last option because Christ definitely wants you to be a part of his Birthday party - but not just for your own sake! Remember, God always intended for Jesus to be Joy TO the world and not just FOR ourselves!

With this in mind, we have decided to give you who attend Mass on Christmas a special a gift that may assist you in giving Christ the gift he wants most: Yourself. It is a little book entitled: Resisting Happiness by Matthew Kelly. The basic premise in the words of the author is this: “Every day, every single one of us encounters resistance. We hit the snooze button, we procrastinate, we avoid the real issues in our lives... for all sorts of reasons. In essence, we sabotage or resist our own happiness. Only by overcoming resistance can we really experience the happiness God created us to experience”. No one more than God wants you to know real joy this Christmas and beyond; the joy of giving him the gift of yourself and then letting him give you away to others so that they too may know and “repeat the sounding joy” again and again, till all have heard and come to know the joy of being close to him too!

Christmas Eve Midnight Mass 2016  Repeat the Sounding Joy!

If Today You Hear His Voice Harden Not Your Hearts.

Repost of Sermon on Oct. 3, 2021

FatherPat

Related tracks