Category Archives: Christianity

Sunday Devotional: The Ten Commandments

Posted on March 7, 2021 by | 6 comments

Exodus 20:1-3, 7-8, 12-17

In those days, God delivered all these commandments:
“I, the Lord am your God,
who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery.
You shall not have other gods besides me.

“You shall not take the name of the Lord, your God, in vain.
For the Lord will not leave unpunished
the one who takes his name in vain.

“Remember to keep holy the sabbath day.
Honor your father and your mother,
that you may have a long life in the land
which the Lord, your God, is giving you.
You shall not kill.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
You shall not covet your neighbor’s house.
You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife,
nor his male or female slave, nor his ox or ass,
nor anything else that belongs to him.”

an examination of conscience

1. I am the Lord your God: you shall not have strange Gods before me.
Do I accord more importance to creation — to people and things? Do I idolize entertainers or politicians, idealizing and placing them on a pedestal? Am I my own god — grandiose, arrogant, and do as I will? Do I subscribe to a self-serving moral relativism– that what is right depends on the situation and on what benefits me? Do I practice humility by serving others? Do I ask for forgiveness when I have wronged another?

2. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
Have my words denied, devalued, or insulted God? Do I use His holy name as a profanity, or as an emotional outburst?

3. Remember to keep holy the Lord’s Day.
Do I avoid, when possible, work that impedes worship to God, joy for the Lord’s Day, and proper relaxation of mind and body? Do I look for ways to spend time with family or in service on Sunday? Do I say “Thank You” for all that He’s given me — my body, mind, work, family, friends, and for life itself?

4. Honor your father and your mother.
Do I show my parents due respect? Do I seek to maintain good communication with my parents where possible? Do I criticize them for lacking skills I think they should have? Do I blame them for my own flaws and problems? Do I honor that which they gave birth to by treating my body and mind with respect, and refraining from impairing and corrupting myself with drugs, indolence, and pornography?

5. You shall not kill.
Have I killed the body, no matter how small, of another? Have I injured another’s body, spirit and emotions with my actions and words?

6. You shall not commit adultery.
Have I stayed true to my marital vows? If unmarried, have I honored another’s marital exclusivity? Have I respected the physical and sexual dignity of others and of myself, and of the institution of marriage?

7. You shall not steal.
Have I taken or wasted the possessions, resources or time that belong to another? Have I dis-respected God’s creation by being wasteful and profligate?

8. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
Have I told lies or embellished stories at the expense of another?

9. You shall not covet your neighbor’s spouse.
Have I honored my spouse with my full affection and exclusive love? Have I, instead, longed for or lusted after another, including fantasy figures?

10. You shall not covet your neighbor’s goods.
Am I content with what I have, or do I compare myself to others, and feel envious, resentful, or entitled to what others have?

May the peace and love of Jesus Christ our Lord be with you!

~E

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Sunday Devotional: The eyewitnesses of the Transfiguration

Posted on February 28, 2021 by | 8 comments

Matthew 17:1-8

Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother,
and led them up a high mountain by themselves.
And he was transfigured before them;
his face shone like the sun
and his clothes became white as light.
And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them,
conversing with him.
Then Peter said to Jesus in reply,
“Lord, it is good that we are here.
If you wish, I will make three tents here,
one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”
While he was still speaking, behold,
a bright cloud cast a shadow over them,
then from the cloud came a voice that said,
“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased;
listen to him.”
When the disciples heard this, they fell prostrate
and were very much afraid.
But Jesus came and touched them, saying,
“Rise, and do not be afraid.”
And when the disciples raised their eyes,
they saw no one else but Jesus alone.

In law, there’s an important concept critical to the determination of truth.

The concept is “percipient witness”. According to Nolo’s Plain-English Law Dictionary, a percipient witness is “A witness who testifies about things she or he actually perceived. For example, an eyewitness.”

Today, the universal Church celebrates and remembers a particular event about which the Apostles were percipient witnesses — the Transfiguration.

2 Peter 1:16-18

Beloved:
We did not follow cleverly devised myths
when we made known to you
the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,
but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty.
For he received honor and glory from God the Father
when that unique declaration came to him from the majestic glory,
“This is my Son, my beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven
while we were with him on the holy mountain.

Do you doubt these percipient witnesses?

This is how the Apostles — percipient witnesses of the transfigured and later resurrected Christ — died, testifying to the truth they’d witnessed until their last breath:

  • St. Stephen, the first martyr of Christianity, was stoned to death in Jerusalem, c. AD 34.
  • St. James, son of Zebedee and brother of St. John the Apostle, was the first Apostle to be martyred. King Herod had St. James beheaded in 44 AD.
  • St. James, son of Alpheus, was reported by the Jewish historian Josephus to have been stoned and then clubbed to death in 62 AD.
  • St. Jude Thaddaeus was crucified in Syria, c. 65 AD.
  • St. Simon the Zealot ministered in Persia and was sawn in half, c. 65 AD after refusing to sacrifice to the sun god.
  • St. Peter and St. Paul were both martyred in Rome about 66 AD, during the persecution under Emperor Nero. St. Paul was beheaded. St. Peter was crucified, upside down at his request, because he did not feel he was worthy to die in the same manner as his Lord.
  • St. Mark, a rope around his neck, was dragged to death in Alexandria, Egypt, in AD 68.
  • St. Thomas was pierced to death in India, 72 AD, where the ancient Marthoma Christians revere him as their founder.
  • St. Matthias, who was chosen to replace Judas, was burned to death in Syria, c. 80 AD.
  • St. Bartholomew (identified as Nathaniel in the Gospel of John) is believed to have been skinned alive and crucified. He ministered in India with St. Thomas, in Armenia, Ethiopia and Southern Arabia.
  • St. Philip was crucified in Hierapolis, Asia Minor, 80 AD, for converting the wife of a Roman proconsul. He also ministered in North Africa.
  • St. Andrew was crucified in Patras, Greece. He also preached in Asia Minor and modern-day Turkey. Christians in the former Soviet Union say he was the first to bring the Gospel to their land.
  • St. Matthew was beheaded in Ethiopia. He had also ministered in Persia.
  • St. John was the only Apostle who died a natural death from old age, after surviving an ordeal of being thrown into boiling oil. He was the leader of the church in Ephesus and is said to have taken care of Mary the mother of Jesus in his home. In mid-90s AD, he was exiled to the island of Patmos, where he wrote the last book of the New Testament–the Revelation.

Below is an account of the Apostles’ martyrdom by Dean Jones in the stunning one-man play St. John in Exile. Though filmed in 1986, I had never heard of or seen it until I discovered it three years ago.

I urge you to watch St John in Exile, which reduced me to weeping, in its entirety.

May the love and peace of Jesus Christ our Lord be with you,

~E

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Sunday Devotional: Lent, the Fall and the Incarnation

Posted on February 21, 2021 by | 2 comments

Mark 1:12-15

The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert, 
and he remained in the desert for forty days,
tempted by Satan.
He was among wild beasts,
and the angels ministered to him.

After John had been arrested, 
Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God:
“This is the time of fulfillment.
The kingdom of God is at hand.
Repent, and believe in the gospel.”

Today is the first Sunday of Lent, a season observed by Christians in imitation of Jesus who prepared Himself for His public ministry in 40 days in the desert.

During Lent, we fast and pray to prepare for Holy Week — the week that culminated in Our Lord’s crucifixion and resurrection.

We are told that the incarnation and crucifixion of the Second Person of the Triune Godhead were because of the fall of our first parents, Adam and Eve.

That fall is a mystery wrapped in a conundrum for, having everything in that bucolic first garden, including and especially the unimaginably sublime gift of seeing and conversing with the Creator (“Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day” –Genesis 3:8), they still chose disobedience and betrayal.

All because of their sin of grandiose narcissism — of wanting to be “like gods,” so as to determine for themselves “what is good and what is evil” although Adam and Eve already knew right from wrong. As the Book of Jeremiah 31:33 says, when God created humans, He placed His law within each of us, written in our very hearts:

[D]eclares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

But our first parents wanted to be their own gods, that is, with their own notions of right and wrong, which is nothing other than a contravention of the First Commandment (“You shall have no other gods before me.” –Exodus 20:3). Another way to say “wanting to be their own gods” is “Do as thou wilt” — the motto of satanist Aleister Crowley and the church of Satan, and the zeitgeist of our corrupt time.

That first sin by our first parents was so cataclysmic that it fundamentally changed the natural order of the world.

A door was opened to chaos: henceforth a price must be paid for being human. Where once was joy and ease, there would be banishment, toil, pain, hardship, sickness, disease, and eventual death (“with painful labor you will give birth to children“; “by the sweat of your brow”; “for dust you are and to dust you will return”). Humankind’s relation with other creatures and the physical environment turned askew as “visible creation has become alien and hostile to man”.

So cataclysmic is the breach that human nature itself became perverted. Henceforth, all of Adam’s progeny would be born with the stain of Original Sin — tinder for sin (fomes peccati) with an inclination to evil. As St. Anselm lamented:¹

I fell before my mother conceived me. Truly, in darkness I was conceived, and in the cover of darkness I was born. Truly, in him we all fell, in whom we all sinned. In him we all lost.

Wrongs require restitution.

The dictionary defines “restitution” as reparation made by giving an equivalent as compensation for loss, damage, or injury caused; indemnification.

So immense was our first parents’ Fall that no man could make amends. Only God Himself, in the person of the Son, could make restitution — by becoming incarnate, only to be tortured, to suffer, and to die on a cross.

That also is a mystery.

Why must it take God Himself to become incarnate in mortal flesh, so as to be tortured and executed in the cruelest method reserved by the Roman Empire for the worst criminals?

This is the answer from the great theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas:²

No mere man could have made satisfaction for the whole race. Yet man owed the debt that had to be paid. Only God could pay the debt, and God did not owe it. Hence it was magnificently right that the payer of the debt, the Redeemer, should be both God and man….

The Incarnation was necessary for man’s salvation. It was not absolutely necessary, for God is almighty, and he could have restored fallen man in other ways. But it was relatively necessary, that is, necessary in relation to the need of bringing redemption to man in the most noble, effective, and admirable way.

How? St. Thomas explains, by:

  1. Being a role model, showing man “the perfect example for good works” and, in so doing, advances man in virtue, enlivens his faith, strengthens his hope, and enkindles his charity. In other words, Jesus shows us how we can become better people, how we can be holy. As St. Augustine said, “God was made man that man might be made God.”
  2. Teaching humankind about evil: “The Incarnation keeps man from evil; …makes him despise the devil; …makes him understand the degrading effect of sin; teaches him to look humbly to Christ and not to be presumptuous; instructs him in the heartening truth that the satisfaction made by God Incarnate releases him from slavery to sin.”

In remembrance of how Christ our Lord was tortured, suffered, and died for our sins, we are asked to make small sacrifices during Lent via:

  • Abstinence: Refrain from eating meat on the Fridays of Lent for all age 14 and older. Why Friday? – because Jesus died for our sins on (Good) Friday.
  • Fasting: Eating one full meal and two small meals for age 18 through age 59, exempting the elderly and those with special dietary needs or medical conditions that require a greater or more regular food intake.
  • Surrender something that gives us pleasure, and/or do something good that we don’t ordinarily do.

Most of all, thank Jesus and tell Him that you love Him with your whole heart, your whole soul, your whole mind, and with all your strength.

May the love and peace of Jesus Christ our Lord be with you,

~E

Footnotes:

¹St. Anselm: Basic Writings, translated by S. N. Deane (La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1961), p. 24.
²Msgr. Paul J. Glenn, A Tour of the Summa (TAN Books, 1978), p. 311.

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Ash Wednesday, beginning of Lent

Posted on February 17, 2021 by | 2 comments

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent — a season of fasting and prayer observed by Christians.

Since Jesus prepared Himself for His public ministry in 40 days, Christians imitate Him with prayer and fasting during this time of Lent to prepare for Holy Week.

Ash Wednesday comes from the ancient Hebrew tradition of penance and fasting, including the wearing of ashes on the head. The ashes symbolize the dust from which God made us and are a reminder of our mortality — “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

In remembrance of how Christ our Lord was tortured, suffered, and died for our sins, we are asked to make small sacrifices during Lent:

  • Abstinence: Refrain from eating meat on the Fridays of Lent for all age 14 and older. Why Friday? – because Jesus died for our sins on (Good) Friday.
  • Fasting: Eating one full meal and two small meals for age 18 through age 59. The elderly and those with special dietary needs or medical conditions that require a greater or more regular food intake, are exempted from fasting.
  • Surrender something that gives us pleasure, and/or do something good that we don’t ordinarily do.

Most of all, tell Jesus that you love Him with your whole heart, your whole soul, your whole mind, and with all your strength.

May the love and peace of Jesus Christ our Lord be with you, always,

-E

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Valentine’s Day and the meaning of true love

Posted on February 14, 2021 by | 2 comments

Today is Valentine’s Day — the day when TV commercials nag men to buy roses, candy, and jewelry for their wives or girl friends.

But did you know that the day is named after a real person, St. Valentine?

At least three different Saint Valentines, all of them martyrs, are mentioned in the early martyrologies under the date of February 14th. But the man for whom Valentine’s Day is named most likely was a priest at Rome who, in the second half of the 3rd century, was arrested and killed by the Emperor Claudius for secretly marrying Christian couples during a time of persecution in the Church. Legend has it that while he was imprisoned and waiting for his martyrdom, he sent letters to his fellow Christians signing them, “From Your Valentine.”

The popular customs associated with Valentine’s Day probably came from a conventional belief in England and France during the Middle Ages, that on 14 February, i.e. half way through the second month of the year, the birds began to pair. Thus in Chaucer’s Parliament of Foules we read:

For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne’s day
Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate.

For this reason the day was looked upon as specially consecrated to lovers and as a proper occasion for writing love letters and sending lovers’ tokens. [Source: Catholic Encyclopedia]

So what is love?

I can find no better definition and description of true love than the words of St. Paul:

1 Corinthians 13:4-7

Love is patient, love is kind.
It is not jealous, it is not pompous,
It is not inflated, it is not rude,
it does not seek its own interests,
it is not quick-tempered,
it does not brood over injury,
it does not rejoice over wrongdoing
but rejoices with the truth.
It bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things.

And here’s the true meaning of Valentine’s Day:

The Greatest Commandment of all is to love God with your whole heart, your whole mind, your whole soul, and with all your strength; and to love your neighbor as you love yourself.

May the love of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you today!

~E

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Welcome!

Posted on February 9, 2021 by | 7 comments

Our Lord instructed us in Matthew 10:16: “Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.”

In the increasingly perilous times we find ourselves in, it is imperative that we maintain our sanity and our health — body, mind and soul — so that we can survive the trials to come and live to fight another day.

That is the purpose of this blog.

To that end, we will impart medical information and tips on health; use humor to relieve your stress with funnies and caption contests; remind you of the goodness of God’s creation with posts on animals and pets; and uplift your spirit and soul with “Sunday Devotionals”.

May God bless you and may God have mercy on America.

~E

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