All Souls' Day

10-29-2023The Pastor's PenFr. Matthew

Dear Friend,

Let me give you some simple thoughts to reflect upon on "All Souls Day."

Early in his career, someone said that Vince Lombardi, the Hall of Fame Football Coach of the Green Bay Packers, knew very little about the game of Football.

Thomas Edison’s teachers gave up on him and said that “He was too stupid to accomplish anything.”

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Absolution

10-22-2023The Pastor's PenFr. Matthew

Dear Friend,

Sin demands to have a person be alone. It withdraws the individual from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him or her, and the more deeply the person becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is the isolation. Sin wants to remain unknown. It shuns the light. In the darkness of the unexpressed, it poisons the whole being of a person.

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Blame

10-15-2023The Pastor's PenFr. Matthew

Dear Friend,

All blame is a waste of time. No matter how much fault you find with another, and regardless of how much you blame another, it will not change you. The only thing blame does is to keep the focus off you when you are looking for external reasons to explain your unhappiness or frustration.

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Let The Burden Go

10-08-2023The Pastor's PenFr. Matthew

Dear Friend,

One day, two Irish monks, James and Patrick, were walking through the countryside. They were on their way to another village to help bring in the crops. As they walked, they spied an old woman sitting at the edge of a river. She was upset because there was no bridge, and she could not get across on her own.

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Turning Failure Into Success

10-01-2023The Pastor's PenFr. Matthew

Dear Friend,

The great inventor Charles Kettering suggested that we must learn to fail intelligently. He said, "Once you've failed analyze the problem and find out why, because each failure is one more step leading up to the cathedral of success. The only time you don't want to fail is the last time you try." Here are three suggestions for turning failure into success:

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Christian Civilty

09-24-2023The Pastor's PenFr. Matthew

Dear Friend,

At a recent gathering of university professors, one teacher reported that at his school the most damaging charge one student can lodge against another is that the person is being "judgmental." He found this pattern very upsetting. "You can't get a good argument going in class anymore," he said. "As soon as somebody takes a stand on any important issue, someone else says that the person is being judgmental. And that's it. End of discussion. Everyone is intimidated!" Many of the other professors nodded knowingly. There seemed to be a consensus that the fear of being judgmental has taken on epidemic proportions.

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Only God Is At The Top

09-17-2023The Pastor's PenFr. Matthew

Dear Friend,

Some years ago, a Tennis Star was at the very top of the tennis world -- yet he was on the brink of suicide. He said, "I had won Wimbledon twice before, once as the youngest player. I was rich. I had all the material possessions I needed ... It's the old song of movie stars and pop stars who commit suicide. They have everything, and yet they are so unhappy. I had no inner peace. I was a puppet on a string."

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Stop Grappling With Life

09-10-2023The Pastor's PenFr. Matthew

Jesus calls us to be people who live in present-tense. An average person’s anxiety is focused on:

40% -- things that will never happen

30% -- things about the past that can’t be changed

12% -- things about criticism by others, mostly untrue

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Let God Take Care Of It

09-03-2023The Pastor's PenFr. Matthew

Dear Friend,

Jesus calls us to be people who live in present-tense.

An average person’s anxiety is focused on:

  • 40% -- things that will never happen
  • 30% -- things about the past that can’t be changed
  • 12% -- things about criticism by others, mostly untrue
  • 10% -- about health, which gets worse with stress
  • 8% -- about real problems that will be faced.

Stop trying to grapple with the what "ifs" and let God take care of it. You simply make that long term investment in God’s kingdom day by day.

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Our Father

08-27-2023The Pastor's PenFr. Matthew

Dear Friend,

Prayer belongs to everyone: to men and women of every religion, and probably also to those who profess none. Prayer arises in our innermost self, in that interior place that spiritual authors call “heart” (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 25622563). Therefore, it is not something peripheral that prays within us, it is not some secondary and marginal ability that we have, but rather it is our most intimate mystery. It is this mystery that prays. Feelings pray, but one cannot say that prayer is only feeling. Intelligence prays, but praying is not simply an intellectual act. The body prays, but one can speak with God even having the most serious disability. Thus the entire man prays if he prays with his “heart”.

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Blessed Are They

08-20-2023The Pastor's PenFr. Matthew

Dear Friend,

Now is the time to reflect on the on the Gospel Beatitudes. As we can read, the last one proclaims that eschatological joy for those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake. This beatitude proclaims the same happiness as the first: the kingdom of Heaven is given to the persecuted in the same way as to the poor in spirit. We thus understand that we have arrived at the end of a single route which has unfolded through the preceding statements.

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Anguish, Not Anger

08-13-2023The Pastor's PenFr. Matthew

Dear Friend,

In the twentieth century Will Rogers was known for his laughter, but he also knew how to weep. One day he was entertaining at the Milton H. Berry Institute in Los Angeles, a hospital that specialized in rehabilitating polio victims and people with broken backs and other extreme physical handicaps. Of course, Rogers had everybody laughing, even patients in really bad condition; but then he suddenly left the platform and went to the rest room. Milton Berry followed him to give him a towel; and when he opened the door, he saw Will Rogers leaning against the wall, sobbing like a child. He closed the door, and in a few minutes, Rogers appeared back on the platform, as jovial as before.

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Are You A Helper?

08-03-2023The Pastor's PenFr. Matthew

Dear Friend,

Among the many books written by Henri Nouwen (1932-1996), one stands out as an enduring little classic, The Wounded Healer. For those who knew him, this book is especially powerful because, without expressly intending to do so, it describes very well the man himself. It was because of his own wounds that he was able to touch the lives of so many people. “By his wounds we have been healed,” St Peter wrote of Jesus (1 Peter 2:24).

However, there was a different reaction to Nouwen’s book from a group who reviewed it and announced that a Christian minister should not come before people as a wounded healer but as “a prophet of God and as a helper in their afflictions.” These different reactions show a gulf between Christians that is probably deeper than most of the issues that divide Christian Churches.

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