Fifth Sunday of the Year (B) Feb 8, 2015. Star shoot

   MEMO for William:
PC has gone out for repairs and countering the virus, hacker continuing.
Also the iPad out of action.
Therefore no CONTACTS.

By some mystery ths Blogspot seems to succeed??
Yours,
Donald 

Fifth Sunday of the Year (B) Feb 8, 2015

 

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Published on 2 Feb 2015

Like Jesus, we must be ready and willing to leave our prayer for those who seek us out. Like Peter's mother-in-law, our encounter with God must get us back to normal stuff.

Fifth Sunday In Ordinary Time

Fr. Raymond - Homily

Fifth Sunday In Ordinary Time

"You are the light of the earth. ... -- From Today's Gospel Matthew 5: 13-16

Sun 5 yr.1

Jesus says that his followers will be a light to the world and salt for the earth.

Since we are his followers then we must consider ourselves as being this ‘light for the world’ this ‘salt for the earth’.  Certainly it would be, to say the least, a bit presumptuous of us if we just to say it of ourselves.  But it is Christ himself who says it of us and therefore it is something we must believe in; and not only is it something we must believe in, but it is something we must try our very best to live up to.  In fact it is one of the very fundamental obligations of  our Baptism.  Just as “No one lives for himself alone; no one dies for himself alone”,  so too, no one is baptized for himself alone.  The privilege of our Baptism means that we must do our best to share among our brothers and sisters in this world the wonderful light and life of grace that we have inherited.

In facing up to this tremendous responsibility it is encouraging for us to realise the power of the grace that is in us;  the tremendous power that is at work in us; the tremendous power that enables us to carry it out effectively and fruitfully.  When we look around at the world about us we could easily be dismayed.  There is so much evil at work.  Its influence seems to be so widespread and so powerful.  What can we do about it?  How can we possibly make any difference?  How can you and I be a light to the world and salt to the earth? The forces of Evil seem to have such a hold on the media, for instance; the press, the radio, television.  Unhealthy values are blared out on every side and dinned into our sight and hearing, into our minds day and night everywhere.

But here we must remember those wonderful words of St Paul:  “Where sin abounds, grace abounds even more”.  The face of grace is not so brazen as the face of evil; the voice of grace is not so strident as the voice of evil, but grace is none the less more powerful in many ways than they are to reach into the minds and hearts of men.  Grace and goodness are more powerful to lead them to the good than sin is to lead them to evil.  “Where sin abounds, grace abounds even more”. We must believe very firmly in that truth.  “Overcome evil with good” St Paul tell us, and he could not say that unless it was indeed possible to overcome evil with good; he could not say that unless Good was indeed more powerful than Evil.

The ultimate proof of this was given us on the hill of Calvary where evil thought it had triumphed over good but where , what it thought was its triumph, was in fact its own undoing.   

Fr. Raymond

   

 

  

Good Shepherd Sunday - Homily Fr. Raymond

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Raymond . . .
To: . . .
Sent: Sunday, 21 April 2013, 10:16
Subject: Good Shepherd Sunday

Good Shepherd Sunday

Today is Good Shepherd Sunday.  

It is a day when we focus on the Church’s need for vocations; Vocations to continue the mission of Christ, the mission of the Good Shepherd in his Church.

The word vocation implies two people: God who calls and the one whom he calls; God  who calls and the one whom He wants to respond to his call.  To understand the meaning of the word “Vocation” in its religious sense we would do well to think first about its meaning in general.  There are many senses in which we can use the word “Vocation” when we consider our lives as a whole.  First there is the fundamental common basic vocation we all have to life and existence.  It is so important to pause for a moment to realise ourselves as all having this fundamental “Vocation”.  We didn’t just come into existence, we were called into existence.  And our lives on this earth, and indeed in heaven hereafter, are nothing but our acknowledgement of and response to this call; our response to this choice God made to call us into existence.  The Psalmist puts it very neatly when he sings “I thank you, Lord, for the wonder of my being.”

Each of us is like a song, a melody; a song sung by our creator into the universe.  God doesn’t just  create us and set us down and go off and do something else.  Just as the song ceases as soon as the singer stops singing, so would we cease to exist if God forgot us for an instant.  But then, after this first basic “Vocation” to our existence there come other vocations from God, other ‘movements’ in the great symphony of life.  These “Vocations” are many and varied.  One of the most basic and primary ones is, of course, the “Vocation” to marriage and family.  In our society, the couple may think that they alone have chosen each other, but Jesus tells us differently: “What God has joined together, let no man put asunder.”  Even though they don’t realise it or acknowledge it, it is God who has called them to be together. What God has joined together, let no man put asunder." In that understanding, every marriage is an arranged marriage, arranged by the Creator himself; and even if one or other of the parties to the marriage is unfaithful to it, God is always faithful to it.  It is always His Marriage and God is such a jealous God.

Much more obviously a vocation from God, however, is the call to the priesthood or the religious life.  This vocation, this call, is a call to dedicate one’s life in a special and exclusive way, not to another human person, but to the knowledge and love and service of God and his Church.

This is the meaning of the word “Vocation” which we are considering today. It is a word which speaks of the very life blood of the Church.  It is a fundamental factor in her very existence.  Without it She cannot survive, hence the great importance of prayer for vocations to the priesthood and the religious life in the Church.

SEVENTY TWO DISCIPLES

LUKE 10:1-12, 17-20

FOURTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

(Isaiah 66:10-14c; Psalm 66; Galatians 6:14-18)

Community Mass Homily – Fr. Raymond

THE SEVENTY TWO

When Jesus chose seventy two disciples to send out ahead of him he was surely making a statement to the first members of his Church. These first Christians were mainly Jews and, on consideration of the number he chose they would inevitably think of Moses and the seventy elders he was ordered by God to choose to help him in the governing of his people. Jesus was proclaiming himself as the New Moses, the New Deliverer of his people from the bondage of sin; the one of whom the first Moses was only a Type and Shadow.

The reason for Jesus’ need for the seventy two was basically the same as the reason for Moses’ need for the seventy viz that the job was too much for one man to handle. Jesus came as ‘really man’ with all the basic limitations of time and space that that implies. As a visible, tangible, preaching and teaching man he couldn’t be in every place and time for his people. He needed human helpers, he needed the extension of his bodily existence which is the church, his mystical Body on earth.

That there is something greater than the first Moses here we can surmise from the fact that Jesus chose seventy two, whereas Moses chose only seventy. There is surely a great significance in the extra two chosen by Jesus. Whereas Moses chose only seventy and God himself appointed the other two (the sons of Aaron) who went up the mountain with them, Jesus, on the other hand chose all seventy two himself, thereby giving a clue, for those who would ponder these things in their hearts, that he was assuming the role of God himself.

Another fact that we might ponder on in order to appreciate the greatness of the role that the disciples of Jesus were being called to is to contemplate the wonderful experience given to Moses’ seventy two. First, they could not go the whole way up the mountain, just as Jesus disciples could not come as close to the Father as his own Beloved Son. Second, nevertheless they did share in an awesome and even life threatening vision of God “They saw him as standing on a sapphire sea, and they ate and drank and did not die” (Ex.24) We are surely right to use this scene as a meditation on how awesome it is to be called work closely with Christ in the mission of his church.