Keep your faith in front of you at work, home, on your phone - Choose a Catholic site for your home page

Most people who use a computer at work use a web browser.    To keep your faith front and center why not choose a Catholic web site as your home page.   You can make it Ss. Francis and Clare home page or you can choose one of your own favorite web sites.   I have a list on the right hand side of my blog listing some favorite web sites.    I have Catholic Exchange set as my home page.    I like this site as it has a daily blog usually commenting on current culture & faith.   It also has the daily Mass readings, Liturgy of the Hours, Words of Encouragement, Pope Benedicts’ Day, Quote of the Day, Homily of the Day, Saint of the day, and daily news updates.  By keeping this as my home page I am able to go back to it for reading daily prayer, Mass readings, and topics.  There is even an option to subscribe summary of daily or weekly headlines.  You can peruse the list of Catholic web sites to the right side of my blog if you want some options to look at.    If you have an option to suggest please add a comment.  

Choices: Chocolate or Vanilla? God or gods of other nations? Choose Wisely!

In Father Vince’s homily this Sunday, August 26, 2012, he asked us about many choices: chocolate or vanilla; IU or Purdue; school or vacation to name a few.  He made the point that we have many choices in our life, but the most important one is our choice to follow God.  

The Sunday readings presented many choices. Joshua asked the tribes of Israel whether they will follow the gods of other nations or the LORD, the God of Israel.  They made the right choice, “As for me and my household, we will serve the LORD”, Jos 24:15.   St. Paul challenged the men of Ephesus to choose to be Christian husbands by loving their wives, “even as Christ loved the church handing himself over for her to sanctify her”, Eph 5:25, as opposed to the Roman pagan culture treating wives with abuse, infidelity, and very little love.  In Mark’s Gospel, many of Jesus disciples’ chose not to follow him because they could not to accept His teaching on eating his body and blood to gain eternal life.  Peter made the better choice by continuing to follow Jesus and professing, “You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God”, Jn 68-69.  

Joshua and Peter are strong examples of our faith in making the most important decision, choosing to follow God.  May their witness inspire you to follow the same path and to choose wisely to “serve the LORD”.

Feast of St. Monica - Persevering in prayer

Today is the feast of St. Monica. She prayed for conversion of her son, St. Augustine, to return to the faith and give up his immoral ways.   Her persevering prayers resulted in her seeing her son convert to the faith, as well as her husband and mother-in-law.  Her son, Augustine, become one of the great Doctors of the Church.  She did not live to see this during her life on earth, as Augustine converted shortly before her death.   Sometimes we don’t see immediately God’s answers to prayer.  The key thing is to trust in prayer and put faith in God. I heard a good story on Catholic radio on how to help your loved ones who may be away from the faith.  It is to take them with you to Mass with you.    This may seem extremely difficult given their estrangement from the faith, but if you bring them spiritually with you prayer it can help you and them both.  If you have family members who have left the faith Saint Monica is a powerful intercessor of prayer and a model for us to follow.

Catholic Radio - A great way to inform you faith & make rush hour more pleasant

Did you know that the Indianapolis area has a Catholic Radio station? Just tune into fm 89.1 (or if on the Northside of Indy 90.1)  Catholic Radio Indy has been around since 2004 and it is a great way to make the rush hour drive a bit more tolerable and also learn about your faith.  There’s some great programming during the drive times.   Check out www.catholicradioindy.org for more information and programming.   If the fm signal is not that good in your area there are alternative ways to listen.   If so you can tune into ETWN Radio on Sirius radio.  You won’t get the local programming, but will hear most of the same content.  You can also listen to the program by steaming from the website.  There is also a great app, iCatholicFM, that you can download for free and listen on your iPhone.  The station has daily Mass at 8 am and 12 noon, the prayers of the Rosary, and Divine Mercy Chaplet.  There are also some great shows for learning about the Catholic faith, including Sonrise Morning Show, Open Line, Catholic Answers, and the Doctor is in.   

One of my favorite shows is Catholic Answers.   It’s usually on between 6 pm to 8 pm.  It seems like I learn something new or interesting to enhance my faith every week.  A good example this week was a guest, Mary Healy, who is the author of the commentary on the Gospel of Mark in the series Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture.  She was answering listeners questions regarding the role of women in the New Testament and gave some interesting insight given the historical context of the time. She pointed out that treatment of women by Jesus was very respectful given the culture at the time. In listening I found out about the commentary series that not only provided Mary’s insights into the Biblical text, but also included the Church fathers interpretations.   It was a practical series of commentaries that wasn’t too technical, but also not too light.  The endorsements were very favorable for this series as an excellent resource for priests and deacons in helping to develop homilies as well as for the Catholic lay person who wants to understand scripture at a deeper level.  I also found a good blog associated with the site, Speaking of Scripture, that gave weekly insight into the Sunday Scripture readings.  A double dose of help for a new deacon!  Pretty good time spent for the 20 minute drive home.

One thing x 2: Don’t wait for the green light to form your life in Christ

In Matthew Kelly’s Rediscovering Catholicism he recommends focusing on “One thing” that you take away from the  Homily at  Sunday Mass for the week and writing it in your Mass journal.    This weeks’ homily continuing in John’s bread of life discourse, Chapter 6, both Fr. Vince and Fr. Anto gave us some good food for life!   Since served two Masses I received a double dose of “one thing”.  

Fr. Anto focused on getting more Life in your life and it’s the presence of God in the Eucharist that we can receive weekly and even daily.  The red candle burning outside the chapel is the sign of the living presence of Christ in the tabernacle.  Instead of searching for life in other places; the bar, parties, movies, come to receive Christ in the Eucharist and he will fill your life with Life. 

Fr. Vince offered to image of forming your life in Christ becoming one in Him through the image of two pieces of clay. When we receive Christ in the Eucharist, we can become one with him.    By following the way Christ calls us to live, following the law of Love of God and your neighbor, we can receive Him weekly and be formed in His image.  Forming ourselves in Christ will lead us to eternal life.

What was the “one thing” that you took away from the Homily this week?  Add a comment and share with others!

Stay connected with your faith while on the go : Apps for daily Mass readings

Like many of us I am on the go quite a bit and don’t always have access to a hard copy of the Bible or Daily Missal to keep up with daily Mass readings.   I usually do have my iPhone most of the time.   There are some great apps for the iPhone (and for Android as well) that help me in keeping connected to daily Scripture readings.    One resource that is no cost is The Catholic Directory.  This is an app that will help you find a church anywhere you are located at.  This is a great resource if you are on vacation and want to find a church to attend Mass or are traveling on business and need to find a place to find solace of a daily Mass or chapel to get some peace and quiet with our Lord. This app also has the daily Mass readings.

Another no cost app is Catholic Calendar by Universalis.  This app has a reflection for the day, the daily Mass readings, and Liturgy of the Hours.   You’ll need Internet access to be able to connect to the site, but there is a paid version if you would like to download all of the texts to your phone.

Another app that I use almost daily is iMissal, which costs $4.99 but is well worth it.   It has the daily Mass readings, the order of Mass, daily bible verses, prayers for all occasions, and news feed on Catholic related news.  This app also will have audio of the daily Mass readings (downloaded from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops web site).   This is probably something that I use the most for this app.   I usually start my day off with exercise in the morning and walk or run in the neighborhood and listen to the daily readings.  Sometimes I will listen to them several times in preparation for reading at Mass. I will also use the audio to listen to the Sunday readings several times throughout the week as well. After exercising I may also read the readings in iMissal as well while eating breakfast. Listening as well as reading the text multiple times really helps me to prepare for Sunday Mass, especially if I am preaching. Click on highlighted text if you want some background on iMissal and also agreat video on the new Roman Missal.

This week I heard several people talk about iMissal so I know it must be a popular app for helping people to connect with the faith.    Mark Prince is one of the users of iMissal I asked him for some feedback on how this app helps with his faith:

“I am a big Apple fan and love their products.  With my career change a few years ago, I felt that my connection to my faith and church being strained. I am on always on the go, on an airplane, staying in a hotel, always on the road, go, go, go.  As much as I would like to tell you that I was traveling with my Bible, I wasn’t.  I had heard that the Bible was coming out as app.  When I went to the app store, I searched Catholic Bible.  I was excited to see not only the Catholic Bible pop up, but the iMissal.  The iMissal keeps me focused to what is important.  I realized that attending Mass, centers me to my faith, but simply put, makes me happy.   Being on the road, catching flights, in meetings all day doesn’t allow me to attend Mass everyday.  But I have found that the iMissal app allows me to follow the Mass calendar, reading, the Gospel, prayers, and my Daily Bread really helps me stay centered.  If I am having a stressful day I will go to my iPhone and pull My Daily Bread and will scroll through Verses that brings peace and centers me back to what is important.  It’s my favorite app and I would highly recommend it.”

I appreciate Mark sharing this and I hope you will find this app along with the others mentioned as resources to spend time with our Lord Jesus every day.  If you have any apps you use please share in comments.

Mary's Assumption and saying yes

In reflecting on the Assumption of Mary and listening to Father Anto’s and Fr. Vince’s homilies a common theme came out on why this Feast celebrating Mary’s body and soul being assumed into heaven since the first centuries of the Church.  The theme that became apparent was she listened to God’s will in her life and said yes.   In doing so she was the perfect model of the first disciple of Jesus.  In following the will of God perfectly in her life it’s fitting that she be assumed to be with her Son both body and soul.   She has been referred to as the new Eve.    Our first human parents, Adam and Eve, suffered death due to them saying no, and thus suffered death due to corruption of sin.   With Mary as the new Eve, she was conceived without life and lived a sinless life, Thus when she fell asleep in this life, she was taken both body and soul into heaven, because she was already perfected.   May we all look to Mary as a model for all of us to emulate and seek to listen to God’s will and say yes to where God is calling us in our lives.