News - Fr. Ernest's A Shepard's Care RSS Feed

I am grieving. I did not know anyone who was injured in the school shootings of Minneapolis and Evergreen, nor did I know of Charlie Kirk before I heard of his assassination. I do not know anyone who has been injured or killed in Ukraine or Gaza or any other war-torn area of our world. I did not know any of the children who drowned in the Guadalupe River flood, or the floods in Pakistan, or the typhoons in the Philippines. So I am not grieving from the loss of a personal relationship. Nevertheless, I feel somewhat sad, tired and overwhelmed by all this bad news about which I feel powerless.

In the parish’s Our Lady of Sorrows Adoration Chapel, you will find peace and solitude when spending time with our Lord as he rests in the monstrance. But what you may not realize is that a first-class relic of the instrument used to crucify Him is nearby. A relic of the True Cross was bequeathed by an IHM parishioner about 15 years ago. It now sits in a reliquary in a glass box to the right of the monstrance, a reminder of the victory over sin and death.

Do you know someone who has known the counsel of the Lord and has been given wisdom from the Holy Spirit? I think Scott Elmer, the Chief Mission Officer for the Archdiocese of Denver, is one of those gifted people. And he’s coming to IHM to share his wisdom with us on the evening of September 15th. Scott is leading the archdiocese on a bold new path of evangelization to meet the challenges posed by our secular culture.

The Labor Day weekend signifies change. Temperatures thankfully start to cool off. The calendar changes from August to September. Traditional schools have begun or will soon begin their classes. But we learn something else might also be changing in the air.

This weekend’s gospel tells of someone asking Jesus, “will only a few people be saved?” We might wonder what he means by “saved”. The Greek word which the gospels use for “saved” (sozo) refers to healing or deliverance in both a physical and spiritual way. It encompasses salvation from danger, sickness, death, evil spirits or sin. In the rest of the New Testament, it usually refers to spiritual salvation. In today’s passage Jesus does not answer the question of “how many;” rather, He focuses on the “how”. “Strive to enter through the narrow gate” (Luke 13: 24), he says, implying that to do so will take some effort on our part.

Currently there are at least three wildfires burning in Colorado covering about 127,000 acres (as of this writing on August 11). So it may seem like a puzzling time to reflect on the words of Jesus in this weekend’s Gospel: “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing” (Luke 12:49). Does Jesus really want the whole earth to go up in flames? We need not take the Lord literally here. Fire is used throughout the Bible as a symbol of God’s mysterious dynamic presence; of God’s guidance and love; of God’s judgment on sinners; and of divine purification. While all these descriptions have their place in the mind of God and in salvation history, today I would turn our attention to another image of fire. The flame of the Baptismal candle is referred to as “the flame of faith” which must be kept burning brightly until the Lord returns. This last image best suits our purposes today as we reflect upon our Stewardship of Faith.

Whenever I fly on a plane, I’ll look into the cockpit on the way to my seat. No, I’m not hoping the pilot will invite me to take over the controls. I’ll want to get a glimpse of the person I’m putting my life into his or her hands. Because I have flown a lot, I have placed my trust in the pilots. I’m sure you have placed your trust in someone or something. Perhaps it is someone you trust with your life or how about when you’re driving and you put your trust in your vehicle to protect you from harm. I think you would agree trust is something that’s earned over time. Now another word for trust is faith. Faith is derived from the Latin word “fides” meaning confidence or trust in a person, thing or concept.

This weekend, Jesus, St. Paul, the Psalmist, and the writer of Ecclesiastes all call us to reevaluate whether we are focusing our efforts on the real goal, and the greater storyline, or if we are giving our lives to side quests. How much time, effort, and resources do we spend on our eternal relationship with God, as opposed to things that will be of no use to us when we die?

Today we hear in the Gospel reading Jesus teach his disciples how to pray through the Our Father. It is considered the perfect prayer, but have you ever considered praying it not just praying the words but slowing down and praying each word/phrase with intentionality allowing the words to bring your own heart closer to God and allowing them to teach us the way we ought to pray. The following is a brief prayerful reflection on each word/phrase in the Our Father, but I would encourage you to go deeper in reflecting on these words by reading the Catechism’s (2759-2865) breakdown of this important prayer.

Whenever another driver zoomed by my father on the road, only to stop at the red light ahead of us, Dad would say, “Yeah buddy, hurry up and wait.” His voice often echoes in my head when impatient drivers cut me off. But when we consider our lives as a whole, there are times to hurry up and there are times to wait. Wisdom helps us decide when each is appropriate. And both of them are on clear display in today’s readings.

If you looked up the word neighbor in the dictionary, the first definition is obvious: a neighbor is one who lives near another. It could be your next-door neighbor. But I really liked the next two definitions of a neighbor: one is a neighbor who is a fellow human being, and the other definition is one who shows kindness and helps another person who is in need.

St. John Paul II spoke these words in a homily while visiting the United States in 1995, and they always come to mind every July 4th for me. We live in a world that tells us to do whatever you want: “You do you!” But that is not what we truly celebrate every year on July 4th; that is not what the Founding Fathers did when they signed the Declaration of Independence. They signed it out of a sense doing what they ought to do for the sake of the people of the 13 colonies. But we can take these words of JPII to a deeper level if we desire to be disciples of Jesus. We all struggle to do what we ought to instead of just doing what we want, but I would argue that despite how difficult that can be at times, it is the bare minimum of what we are called to do as disciples. And if we only remain at that base level, we are missing out on what it means to be a disciple of Jesus and a Catholic.

The Holy Spirit is leading us through change into new opportunities for growth . On this Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, let us recall that they did not always agree; but their partnership in mission laid the foundations of the Church of Rome. We join their partnership in a Church that has grown through many difficult changes. But as Jesus promised, “the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16: 18). St. Peter and St. Paul, pray for us!

This weekend is the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ. Yes, Jesus is still with us! He is with us at every mass we celebrate. “The real presence” means that in reality Jesus makes his dwelling in us when we receive him as Holy Communion.

When we want to look for role models to exemplify these traits, we only need to look to the Holy Trinity. For example, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit love us unconditionally. So, it’s appropriate that Father’s Day this year falls on the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. Even though this Solemnity is only once a year, the Holy Trinity should be in our lives 365 days a year. For example, we recite the name of each member of the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit when we make the sign of the cross. We reference each member of the Trinity when we recite the Gloria and the Creed. Christians are baptized in the names of the Holy Trinity. So, the Holy Trinity’s fingerprints are all over our Catholic faith.

Jesus filled the infant Church with the Holy Spirit to continue His mission, and He continues to do so today. On that first Pentecost, after hearing our first Pope preach his first sermon (Acts 2: 14-40), about three thousand souls “received his word and were baptized” Acts 2: 41). Many of them were probably among the crowd some fifty days earlier crying for Jesus to be crucified. Now they knew why. What made the difference? The Holy Spirit of truth and power, of love and forgiveness; the Spirit that the ascended body of Jesus released from heaven upon His disciples like tongues of fire (cf. Acts 2: 1-4). The counter-cultural courageous witness of dynamic disciples transformed Jerusalem that day, and it continues to transform our world.

There is a liturgical principle stated in Latin, “Lex orandi statuat legum credendi,” which means, “the law of prayer establishes the laws of belief.” Today’s liturgy gives us a great example of this principle. The Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord invites us to believe in more than the fact that the glorified body of Jesus ascended from earth to heaven. The prayers of the liturgy invite us into a much higher reality, to contemplate the relevance of the Ascension for ourselves. Let us review these prayers for our edification.

The coming of the Holy Spirit is connected with the gift of peace in the Gospel of John (cf. 20: 19-22). It is good for us to ponder this during the last two weeks of the Easter Season as we prepare for the Solemnity of Pentecost (June 9). Jesus came to bring His peace which is unlike that of the world because His peace starts in the human heart, not in the rooms of worldly leaders trying to get the best deal for themselves while their armies and drones keep attacking.

Can you complete the above sentence? If so, then you know this famous teaching of Jesus. “As I have loved you, so you also should love one another” (John 13: 34). This condition, “as I have loved you,” could mean many different of things. Love one another by preaching like Jesus, healing like Jesus, forgiving like Jesus, serving and washing feet like Jesus, suffering and dying like Jesus, etc. No one can imitate Jesus perfectly in all these areas. But since we are focusing on priestly vocations this weekend, I’d like to mention another condition which is sometimes overlooked: Love one another by serving the Church through the gift of celibacy.

This weekend we focus on our Stewardship of Creation. This has nothing to do with political agendas or scientific theories. It’s as simple as this: God created a beautiful world and placed human beings within it to cultivate and take care of it (see Genesis 1:15). Stewardship of Creation invites us to do two things. 1) Be thankful to God for the gift of creation, which includes ourselves. And 2) Express our gratitude to God by doing what we can to cultivate and take care of creation. I pray that this reflection will inspire us to grow as good stewards of creation.