Category: Parish News & Events

In today’s Gospel, Jesus issues a frightening warning to all those gathered around Him. He foretells eternal damnation for those who will not repent. Blood will be spilled. Souls will be condemned by their actions. People will perish. But He does not give His warning without also providing hope.

There is still time. Damnation is not inevitable. After issuing his warning, Jesus provides a parable that offers hope to those listening. He tells the story of a fig tree that would not provide fruit. When the owner of the orchard saw its lack of fruit, he desired to cut it down. But the gardener spoke up on behalf of the plant, asking for one year before the fig tree should be cut down. In that time, the gardener would cultivate the ground and fertilize it, giving the tree the best chance of bearing fruit. If at the end of the year fruit had not been produced, the gardener would cut down the tree.

We are each that fig tree in the parable, and the one year of cultivation is the span of years that we will live on this earth. That is the time that we have to be cultivated and fertilized. That is the time that we have to embrace our salvation. Jesus Christ is our gardener, our defender, but even He must work within the bonds of our allotted time. We must embrace our salvation while it is ours to accept. Once we have passed, there is no turning back. If we have not accepted our salvation by then, it will be too late. We will perish. We will be uprooted and cast away.

We don’t know how many years we have been given, so the time for conversion is now. Jesus Christ has already provided us the means to be saved. We just need to accept it. The ground has been fertilized and cultivated. Christ’s blood and water have been poured out from the cross, watering the ground. He has given us His Word in the Scriptures and His very Body and Blood in the Eucharist. We just need to take and read, take and eat, take and drink, and we will be saved.

Jesus Christ has provided the cultivation of the ground where we grow. Our souls can be fed. Now we must prepare for the harvest. We must bear fruit. We must open ourselves up to God’s Word, repent, and receive the Bread of Life. Christ is preparing us for the harvest. Will you be found ready when the time for reaping comes?

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“Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth?  No, I tell you, but rather division.” – Jesus

Most people would not smack books out the hands of a cripple at the library. Most people won’t cuss out the girl at McDonalds because they got an apple pie instead of a pumpkin pie. Most people quietly tolerate Facebook posts they disagree with and scroll on, avoiding the social brawl about to happen in the comment section.

Most people want to be known as a “good person.”

Very few of us want to be seen as jerks.

It’s a part of our humanity to avoid conflict and want to be liked by people around us. This instinct helps keep societies stable. Unfortunately, it also makes us poor Christians.

What’s interesting is that Jesus came to the world to rock the boat. He turned everything on its head. So much so, he was crucified for it.

And here’s the crazy part: Jesus wasn’t “nice.”

Nice is a shallow adjective that is easily misinterpreted to be Christian. Christ loves all people, but it’s because of his love that he has to put his foot down. A “nice” person does nice things for their own ego and because they are concerned with how people perceive them.

Christ creates division.

Modern Catholics are very quick to go with the flow. There’s often an expectation of tolerance and niceness when we think about the modern day Catholic. This is not at all the case. We are supposed to love others but if others persist in evil we cannot condone such behavior.

Humans are given Free Will. Ideally, we use our Free Will to choose the good, but in order for it to be a truly Free Will we must be able to choose the evil. If evil is not an option, is our Will free?

If you have never felt left out or at odds with non-believers there’s a very good chance that you are not living out the Catholic faith that Jesus intended. Jesus himself told us that division would happen. Jesus himself lived the Gospel so loudly that he was killed for it. Have you come even close to being killed for your belief in the Gospel?

It doesn’t have to be a literal death; it is more often a social death. A death that involves being unfriended on Facebook or getting called a “prude.”

If friends believe abortion is acceptable, we should love them, but we must show our dissent. We might lose our friends because of it.

As Jesus did, we should be friends with the sinners, “prostitutes”, and “tax collectors” but we also must share the Gospel and urge them to “sin no more” (in the most loving way possible).

To tolerate sin is failing in our Christian Faith. Being Christian has nothing to do with being nice and everything to do with dying for your faith. We are not a faith of subtlety.

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