Tag: Joy

Our Incentive is Joy

Relax.  The orders from Jesus in the Gospel of Luke (6:27-38) are a string of exaggerations designed to shock us. He doesn’t really intend for us to take them literally. We need only be nice and considerate, and civil with most people and everything...

Where is Joy?

Once there was a little boy in church attending Mass with his mother. He was in a happy mood, and he was looking at all the people in the pews around him and smiling at them. He wasn’t doing anything wrong or creating a disturbance of any sort—he...

The Way to Complete Joy

Let me start with a confession: as I prepared this homily, I realized that all three readings for the Sixth Sunday of Easter build on last Sunday’s readings by insisting on the vital importance of loving. Very rapidly I became frightened at the...

The Joy of Being “Eucharistic People”

“I am God’s wheat and shall be ground by their teeth so that I may become Christ’s pure bread. Pray to Christ for me that the animals will be the means of making me a sacrificial victim for God. No earthly pleasures, no kingdoms of this...

Promises, Promises

Each day, we make promises. For those of us who are married, we made promises to our spouses on the day of our marriage. “I promise to be true to you.” For those of us who are ordained, we made promises to our bishop on the day of our ordination as...

How Do You Define Joy?

I know a man named Ralph, (not his real name). As a young man, Ralph met a beautiful woman who he fell deeply in love with. They were married and lived a life together filled with joy and happiness. But, sadly, their blissful existence ended...

The Secret to Lasting Inner Joy

If we were to give a title to today’s liturgy it would be: the role of God’s Word in our life. As individuals, God’s Word is for us a great source of comfort and light, just as it is for our Protestant brothers and sisters. However, it is self...

Jesus Wants To Set Us Free

Some years ago there was a popular and inspiring TV show called Touched by an Angel, in which the Irish actress Rona Downey played an angel named Monica. In each episode she, sometimes assisted by two other angels named Tess and Andrew, took on...