
To Experience Charity is to Know God
by © LPi Fr. John Muir | 10/29/2023 | Weekly ReflectionIn our secularized culture, we all struggle with belief in God, at least to some degree. An atheist man named Robert Bridges once wrote to his friend, the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, asking how he could possibly learn to believe in God. Hopkins pithily responded: “Give alms.” Would that help someone tempted by atheism today, like you and me?
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He is Lord of All
by © LPi Fr. John Muir | 10/22/2023 | Weekly ReflectionWith little more than a year until the United States’ national elections, I find myself feeling, like many Catholics, both dread and energized. Dread, because our democratic republic can be a messy endeavor and campaigns a long, nasty, and unedifying slog; energized, because hope for positive societal change can be enticing and engaging. As a pastor, I see similar conflicting attitudes in those whom I serve. How can Catholics best engage our political arena in a way which is truly helpful and worthwhile?
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God's Love Calls Us Relentlessly
by © LPi Fr. John Muir | 10/15/2023 | Weekly ReflectionI confess that I have a soft spot for the scary things Jesus says because they are usually ignored. But there’s gold in them thar hills, if we have courage to look. This week Jesus gives us a terrifying warning in his parable about the king who gives a marriage feast for his son and promptly goes berserk when people don’t respond. The point: those who do not properly respond to God’s generous invitation will face totally devastating consequences. The invitees who don’t show up get their city burned to the ground. The poor homeless man is tortured for not wearing the correct clothes. Scary indeed.
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Seek God's Kingdom Passionately
by © LPi Fr. John Muir | 10/08/2023 | Weekly ReflectionJesus’ parables are much stranger than most people realize. This week is an attention-getting example. He tells the religious leaders a parable about a completely absurd situation. Blood-thirsty and insane tenants violently abuse and kill the servants of their landlord. Inexplicably, the owner keeps sending them more victims of increasing value — up to and including his own son. Weird.
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Called to do God's Will
by © LPi Fr. John Muir | 10/01/2023 | Weekly ReflectionA life-long Catholic friend of mine recently mumbled to me, “I can’t stand all these converts to the faith. They’re always rocking the boat.” It surprised me because he is dedicated to evangelization, and yet he struggles with openness to new Catholics. It made me realize how easily I close my heart to those whom I perceive to be outsiders who become new members of the Catholic community. Almost unconsciously I reduce the world to the categories of “us” and “them.” The result is that meaningful community silently shrinks in my life. Don’t we all do that to some degree?
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God's Grace is Free
by © LPi Fr. John Muir | 09/24/2023 | Weekly ReflectionOnce I gave my three-year-old niece a certain toy for Christmas. When she opened it, she was happy. Shortly thereafter her five-year old sister opened another present from me: the same toy, along with some play jewelry. The three-year-old cried out: “That’s not fair! Why’d she get the jewelry, too?!”
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Read how Adoration has Impacted the Lives of your Fellow Parishioners
by Paul Gagnon | 09/17/2023 | Weekly Reflection“Could you not watch one hour with Me?” (Matthew 26:40) These words caught my attention on the Holy Hour of Reparation prayerbook sitting in the pew as I entered the Adoration Chapel one day a few years ago. As a convert to Catholicism almost 20 years ago while in college I feel like I missed out on the importance of Eucharistic Adoration.
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Don't Scorn the Weight of the Cross
by © LPi Fr. John Muir | 09/03/2023 | Weekly ReflectionIsn’t it easy to relate to Peter? One moment Jesus announces Peter’s deep communion with God the Father. The very next, when he rejects the logic of Jesus’ suffering and death, Jesus calls Peter Satan. We Christians shouldn’t be too shocked when we experience both spiritual highs and lows, when we perceive breathtaking contradictions in our hearts.
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God's Beloved Family
by © LPi Fr. John Muir | 08/27/2023 | Weekly ReflectionIsn’t it a bit weird that Catholics call the Pope “papa,” father? This Sunday provides us with essential Scriptural background on the papacy, the petrine office. Jesus gives Peter the “keys to the kingdom of heaven,” after witnessing to the special grace Peter has to know Jesus’ true identity. Many have pointed out that the “keys” refer back to the figure of Eliakim, King David’s prime minister. True enough.
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The Master's Table
by © LPi Fr. John Muir | 08/20/2023 | Weekly ReflectionThe suffering of a child symbolizes uniquely terrible evil as well as despair about the future. This week’s Gospel gives a “limit” case in which Jesus encounters this evil in the form of a mother with a suffering daughter. What he does is stunning and massively helpful for us if we bravely ponder the details.
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Trust in the Lord's Grace
by © LPi Fr. John Muir | 08/13/2023 | Weekly ReflectionA man at my parish was struggling to overcome a habitual sin. He said to me, “Father, I know the chance that I will commit sin again is really high. Why should I keep confessing my sins? Isn’t that dishonest?” Anyone who has felt the tyrannical power of sin — and who hasn’t? — has pondered this kind of question.
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Be Open to Transfiguration
by © LPi Fr. John Muir | 08/06/2023 | Weekly ReflectionWhat is Christianity finally about? These days if you ask almost anyone who doesn’t know the Bible you’ll probably hear an answer like this: “Being a good person” or “following the golden rule.”
No offense to the golden rule, but our faith is simply much stranger than that. This week’s feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord is a luminous example of this. Jesus becomes radiantly and overwhelmingly beautiful. The glory of God literally shines forth from his body and even his clothes.
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The Millionaire
by © LPi | 07/30/2023 | Weekly ReflectionAt a church meeting, a very wealthy man rose to tell the rest of those present about his Christian faith.
“I’m a millionaire,” he said, “and I attribute it all to the rich blessings of God in my life. I remember that turning point in my faith. I had just earned my first dollar, and I went to a church meeting that night. The speaker was a missionary who told about his work. I knew that I only had a dollar bill and had to either give it all to God’s work or nothing at all. So at that moment, I decided to give my whole dollar to God. I believe that God blessed that decision, and that is why I am a rich man today.”
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Patience is Rooted in Hope
by © LPi Fr. John Muir | 07/23/2023 | Weekly ReflectionLife, like the church, is often burdened with evil, smallness, and impurities. The Lord’s parables give us a hope-filled perspective on all three.
Evil: in Jesus’ parable about the good farmer whose enemy plants weeds at night, Jesus tells us that God is not the cause of evil but permits evil to exist with good out of his patient love. He will finally deal with it, but his love lets things stay messy for a time.
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From the first letter to Serapion by St. Athanasius, Bishop
06/04/2023 | Weekly ReflectionLight, radiance and grace are in the Trinity and from the Trinity
It will not be out of place to consider the ancient tradition, teaching and faith of the Catholic Church, which was revealed by the Lord, proclaimed by the apostles and guarded by the fathers. For upon this faith the Church is built, and if anyone were to lapse from it, he would no longer be a Christian either in fact or in name.
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