Pray To God Today

On this weekend a number of years ago, I was at morning mass and during the homily someone’s phone started to ring. The man frantically searched for his phone, searching his coat to finally turn it off.  When he finally did, the priest turned toward him and said, “You better hope that wasn’t God calling you, or else you are going to have one angry voicemail!” In todays Gospel Jesus calls four of his twelve disciples.   We here in Matthews account today, of Jesus approaching them while they work away, living their ordinary lives. Although familiar to us, it would have been rather peculiar to a Jewish person who would have read this Gospel, or to the Jews themselves.   In the Jewish tradition disciples sought out a teacher, but today the teacher searches for his disciples. Jesus finds these fishermen   and called them to a radical new life where they will become fishers of people. These fishermen, attracted by the invitation,   drop everything and immediate...

On one level this is a very simply question, you are a student at the university, or someone working at such and such place. You live in Winnipeg, Manitoba and you are currently sitting in Christ the King Chapel at St. Pauls College. You are related to so and so, and you have your own experiences, ideas, and originality. But yet, one can still ask, who are you? Who is the true you? Who are you, without relation to any job, place, amount of money, or prestige? What, at the very end of the chain, is it that you call you? Today, on this last day of the Christmas season, we celebrate the feast of the Baptism of the Lord. Jesus seeks out John and receives his baptism. John’s baptism allowed the revelation of Jesus’ true identity to all those around. His true identity comes from that heavenly voice who says that Jesus is the beloved Son, with whom God is well pleased. The first chapter of Matthew relates Jesus within history, and the second chapter relates Jesus to a series of place...

One of the hardest things to define is what makes a family a family and who belongs in it? Is it your relatives by blood? Your friends who you choose? Your immediate family? Your community? There are many definitions of what a family is and how people identify to and with a particular family. Yet, each family will have its fun and laughter, unique traditions, its sufferings and fights, its deaths and births. The Holy Family is of no exception. From the very get-go of the family, they were faced with struggles and suffering, with joys and surprises. They are a family that experienced much that you and yours experience too.   They were a family who’s lives were marked by; great surprises, and tribulations. Visited by shepherds and magi, being refugees to be safe from evil and killings. The Holy Family had a rough start. However, we find the key to their holiness written in the letter from St. Paul today. In writing his letter to the community in Colossal, St. Paul writes t...

It is pretty amazing as Catholics to celebrate Christmas. We remember that the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the King of Kings, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace came down from heaven and became a human child.  “The time came…” the Gospel says, for the long expected king of the world to take on human flesh. So often we forget that our faith is rooted in that little child born in a manger over 2000 years ago and not based merely on some philosophical idea. We have a faith rooted in a historical event in which salvation took on flesh. Today, as we remember Christ being born in that manger, we must recall too that in doing so, he experienced  the full human experience. He was born, dependent on others, crying and hungry. In his life he experienced pain and happiness, friendship and betrayal, loneliness and inclusion.  He shared our journey; he experienced the joys and the darkness that is in the world. But he came to dispel that darkness, that sin and des...

Every year I always find I get the song, ‘ White Christmas’ stuck in my head, especially the jazzy version done by Michael Bublé. Of course this wonderful song rings all the louder in my head as the snow gently falls on a cold winters day. For me, it simply wouldn’t be Christmas without the snow on the ground and being frozen to my core. I am always dreaming of a ‘white Christmas’, and the wonderful time of year it is.      As we celebrate the fourth Sunday of Advent, we are focused on the role, response, and figure of Joseph. Here is a man who has not a single word spoken in the entire bible, who works as the silent protector of the Son of God. In todays gospel, Joseph had decided to divorce Mary, since she was with a child that was easily known not to be his. Divorce in that time was as easy as writing a note and presenting it to the woman's father. As he had just made up his mind, an angel of the lord intervened in a dream and changed his life.      ...