Every Christian has a double citizenship. We are citizens of the world and citizens of heaven. In the worldly, a person owes a great many things. He owes his safety; his public services, the protection of his God-given rights to the State. This debt places us all under the obligation to be men and women of honor by respecting our duty as good citizens in protecting the common good.

My dear friends, the Christian is also a citizen of heaven. There are matters of conscience, of religion, of principle and of universal unchangeable truth in which the responsibility of the Christian is to God alone. We owe to God many more things; our inalienable rights as human beings, the salvation of our souls as well as the salvation of others.

Continue reading “We can be good citizen and a good servant of God by forming a right conscience” →

Once, I had the pleasure of having dinner with two older Portuguese people; a brother and a sister. They told me the story of their father’s conversion.

Their father was a very proud, abusive man who was an avowed atheist who actively persecuted Christians. On October 13, 1917, he left the house to heckle and throw stones at three young children who claimed to be having visions of Mary. On that day, Mary promised a miracle that everyone could see.

Some time passed, the couple remembered when all od saddened their father burst through their front door, fell on his knees and began to recite the Rosary. He told them he had seen the Sun dancing in the sky and falling to the earth.

Continue reading “The Rosary is the prayer of humanity” →

Saint Catherine of Siena once wrote, “Be what God has called you to be and you will find happiness for the rest of your life!” The Gospel doesn’t really praise anyone today. It sets before us a picture of two very imperfect men: one who says he will do what his father asks and doesn’t and the other who is defiant but later goes and does what he is asked.

Neither man in the story is the ideal son. The ideal son would have accepted joyfully the father’s request and did what the father asked immediately. This parable teaches us that promises do not always take the place of practice. It teaches us that to be truly respectful, courteous, and obedient one must put words into action.

Continue reading ““Preach the Gospel and sometimes, use words” -Francis of Assisi” →

Deacon Greg Maskarinec’s Homily for the 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time

“Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive?  As many as 7 times?  Jesus answered, “I say to you, not 7 times, but 77 times.”  Some of us might be thinking, “I’ve already forgiven my brother 75 times.  Only 2 more to go and I’ll never have to forgive him again!”

Well, I have some bad news.  Other versions of the Bible translate Jesus’ words as “70 x 7 times”.  Let’s see, 70 x 7 is 490 which means I have to forgive my brother 415 more times!  Yikes, that’s a lot of forgiving!  I have 3 brothers.  Does that mean 490 x 3 times?  Thank God he didn’t mention anything about having to forgive sisters!

But the news is even worse.   You see, when Jesus said that we must forgive our brother 77 times, what He really meant is that there must be no limit to our forgiveness.  Why?  Why must we forgive without limit?  Because being created in the image and likeness of God we are to love, to be merciful and to forgive as God does.   like the King in today’s Gospel who forgives the debt of a servant who could never pay him back, the servant is expected to treat those who are in debt to him in the same way – with forgiveness.  There is to be no limit to our forgiveness of others because there is no limit to God’s forgiveness for us. Continue reading “Forgiveness: A Life-Giving Gift” →

The passage this morning from the Gospel of Matthew presents us with an action plan for mending broken relationships that often result from a lack of attention to our Christian responsibilities.

If we feel someone has wronged us, we should immediately put our complaint into words. Holding a grudge for any length of time is ludicrous in the mind of a Christian.

Continue reading “The importance of human reconciliation” →