Petersboat

What drives out demons is not fascination with evil; that often makes it worse. Rather, fascination with Christ reorders us. When we humble ourselves before Him, He repairs the breach between us and the authority of God in our lives and evil is cast out.

The developers of AI began by directing their large languages models through a kind of Constitution, “Do this, and don’t do that,” but they quickly learned that in some mysterious way those models tended to "do what they want” anyway, disobeying the parameters and rules.Now the designers of this false utopia are almost pleading with the software to function with good intentions, and to make decisions based on what is best for the human person. They are asking it to “be nice,” as if that were enough.

A word about coming alive by dying to ourselves, finding fulfillment in emptying ourselves, and living with Christ on the cross.

In the heart of every man there is a desire for God that burns like a fire in need of a fireplace, lest it burn destructively in the world. The Church, as Mother of the Theological Virtues of Faith, Hope, and Love, can tame the Natural Virtues of Prudence, Temperance, Justice and Fortitude in such a way as to enable us to wield them toward God, our original desire, our first love.

We hear people saying, "Law! Law! Law!" And we've got great laws, and a great Constitution. So what's the problem? Why isn't yelling, "Law!" working? Is there something missing? Something more essential, even necessary?

We are God's children now, no longer dogs on the street. We once lived by instinct and appetite alone, but now we live by God's Spirit, which illuminates our intellect and will, those faculties of our human soul that are characteristic of the sons and daughters of God.

If we would be truly wise, yes. By God's grace, a man can surrender his gold for the treasures offered to us in Christ, his frankincense for the true prayer that Christ shares with us, and even his own definitions of rest, which Christ also transcends and transfigures. And in fact, man must. Only then will he depart for his country by a different way, changed and intent on peace with his neighbors.

Believing in miracles is essential to our Faith, since the Sacraments are all miracles. But it's still more important to ask what God may be trying to say to us through the specific signs He sends to us in our own days.

I suppose most parents will say to their children, "You can be whatever you want to be when you grow up," but I don't imagine that Our Lady and Saint Joseph said such things to Jesus.

A little boy came to me after Mass yesterday, showing me a gold key in a red bag. It turned out to be a good way of understanding the intercession of the Blessed Mother. This is a teaching on Our Lady, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and how she desires to help us to stay close to her Son.

An unexpected introduction to a man and his son at a Christmas party has led me to a deeper knowledge of Jesus. I begin and end this 3rd Advent reflection with that story.

Last week, we spoke of emptying ourselves of the spirit of the world in order to make room for the Holy Spirit. In this episode, we'll move into a word about the knowledge of the self that the Holy Spirit makes possible.

This is the first part of a four-week spiritual preparation for Christmas, beginning with a word (based on the Mass readings for the First Sunday of Advent) about making room in our hearts for Christ.

The Feast of Christ the King was established by Pope Pius XI in 1925 to implore all people - especially leaders of totalitarian states - to allow Christ to reign in their hearts, that He might direct their thoughts and actions according to the Father's will for peace's sake. But since peace is begotten by God, not made by man, it is by the forgiveness of sin that man is then poised to bring God's peace to the world.

The title's a bit click-baity, but it was either that or "Sure Feels Like the End Sometimes," which also seemed a bit of a ploy. In any case, this Sunday's readings prepared us for Christ's return to judge the living and the dead, because next weekend is the Feast of Christ the King, which will bring with it the end of the liturgical year and a foreshadowing of the end of all things. My hope, here, was to say that by growing in our awareness of how Christ is already with us, we can be relieved of any fear of His coming again in glory - or even our own death.

I propose, in this homily, a way of understanding the kind of help that Jesus is trying to offer us. It seems to me that he dwells in us in order to help us make sense of our thoughts and feelings, which are often wrong - thank God.

We do not like waiting. Well, in any case, we're not good at it, which is obvious; in this age of invention we've all but eliminated the need to wait for anything. There was a time when we waited for the seeds, the rains, the sun. Some still do, but most of us go to the supermarket and still complain about the checkout line. We get frustrated with shipping delays, abhor traffic, and have all but abandoned television for the immediacy of binge-streaming.No wonder the suffering of purgatory is so much on our conscience these days, like a punishment the child sees coming while returning home from school. We are full of guilt for allowing ourselves to have become so alienated from the thing happening everywhere else in the natural world, which is essential for growth, namely, waiting.But I wouldn’t want us to think that the waiting we hear so often associated with purgatory is arbitrary or merely punitive. If that antechamber to heaven really is, as the Church teaches, the place where God’s mercy tempers His justice, then there must be something to be gained by the experience of waiting offered to us in this life. Maybe we shouldn’t be so afraid of it or resent it. Maybe we should welcome it, and grow in it.   

The title of this episode is a reference to the film, The Crossing Guard, which I mention toward the end of the reflection in the hope of illustrating the way that Christ can be of the greatest help to us, if we would open our heart to Him. Of course, it is a scary thing even to acknowledge our desire for God - as terrifying as the seemingly infinite space of the cosmos.

Looking forward to the end of time with hope requires conceiving of our lives by the Holy Spirit in light of the promises God makes to us in the Scriptures, which are themselves inspired by the Holy Spirit. The hope we find in them enables us to overcome the deception of the evil spirit.

If being together at Mass on Sundays is called "practicing the Faith" that means the world is our playing field, which means that Christ is training us to give thanks to God always and everywhere.