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The greatest gift our Lord Jesus Christ left us is the gift of himself in the Holy Eucharist. This gift is unlike any other, and cannot be compared to anything we know or imagine. It is evidence of the depth of his love for humanity... [Click here to read more]

Fr. Julius reflects on the great gift of the Eucharist and shares an excerpt from Pope John PAul II's Ecclesia de Eucharistia

Fr. William reflects on the mystery of the incarnation and the meaning of Christmas

Our Lord Jesus, whose birth we celebrate at Christmas, is accustomed to the various experiences common to human beings...This same Jesus says, Come! He can identify with our own experiences. Have you lost a loved one? He did too. Have you been betrayed by loved ones? He was too. Have you been humiliated and stripped of your dignity? He is familiar with that as well. He knows whatever we are going through. And he says, Come! [Click to read more]

Fr. William shares his reflections on what it means to be an Advent Church. [Click to read]

We have such a compassionate God! It blows my mind every time I stop and really reflect on it! Who is this God who is so great and majestic and yet so full of mercy and concern for me?! He speaks tenderly to my heart as He spoke tenderly all those years ago to Jerusalem through His faithful prophets. And, like Jerusalem, I must hear His words of comfort and liberation, let them seep into my very being, and then go forth as a herald to share them with anyone who will listen! [Click here to read more]

The Third Sunday of Advent is Gaudete Sunday. The term Gaudete refers to the first word of the Entrance Antiphon, “Rejoice.” Our celebration today echoes those words, “Rejoice: the Lord is nigh.” This weekend, the celebrant at Mass has the option of wearing rose-colored vestments, and we light the rose-colored candle on our Advent wreath to emphasize our joy as Christmas draws near. The lighter colored candle also speaks of the coming of Jesus, who is the light of the world, and whose light dispels the darkness of night. The near arrival of our redemption should be a cause of great joy for us... [Click here to read more]

God has a passionate desire to bring all men to Him, renewing all things. The prophets often spoke in the midst of sorrow and confusion, the aftermath of destruction and displacement, and when God’s people had turned away. They relayed His call for repentance and reform, the hope of restoration, and the promise of all nations coming to know Him. [Click here to read more]

The Eucharist is in its very core an act of Thanksgiving. We give thanks to God who is the source of our being, and who keeps us in existence. This is the most fitting thing to do. And as we respond in the Preface, “it is right and just.” This weekend the church begins a new Liturgical season, the season of Advent. Advent is the season of preparation for Christmas. Major feasts in the church are marked by a period of preparation... [Click here to read more]

This weekend the church celebrates the Solemnity of Jesus Christ the Universal King. This feast was inaugurated for the universal church by Pope Pius XI in 1925 with the encyclical letter, Quas Primas. Pope Pius attributed the evils of the time to the fact that men had cast Jesus and his holy laws out of their lives. These had no place in people’s private or political lives. This rejection of Jesus as Savior and the refusal to come under his reign will continue to make peace elusive. This feast was therefore to call all people to acknowledge Jesus’ supremacy as King over all of creation and to submit to his kingship... [Click to read more]

As the liturgical season draws to its end, we will begin to see a shift in focus to the end of time, the last days, judgment and what follows. Last weekend the first reading presented us with the example of a Hebrew mother and her sons who demonstrated courage in the face of persecution, even to the point of willingly accepting bodily death in defense of the faith and traditions of their fathers. The story offered us one of the earliest Old Testament references to the belief in the resurrection, a life after death, implied in belief in the restoration of severed limbs. The saints, the heroes of our faith, did not see this earthly life as all there is. They believed that there is life even after death. And this faith urged them to live joyfully even when people treated them with contempt and so much hate. They knew that their destination was not this world, but the world which Christ had gone to prepare after his resurrection and ascension. [Click here to continue reading]

One of the core tenets of the Christian faith is belief in the resurrection from the dead. We believe that death is not the end, but that life continues even after bodily death. This faith is anchored in the belief that Christ both died and rose from the dead. He is the first fruit from the dead, and by his rising has won victory over death for those who believe in him. We believe that when our own earthly sojourn concludes in death, we too will rise with Christ again...

The First reading for this weekend narrates a dramatic victory won by the Israelites against the Amalekites. Moses positioned himself on a hill, a posture of prayer and held up the staff of God, a symbol of his authority...God gave victory to this aggregate of people whom he had chosen as his own. It was not on account of anything they had done, but because God wanted a relationship with them. [Click to read more]

Gratitude is the central theme in the readings for this weekend. Every year, we have the privilege of celebrating Thanksgiving Day. I would typically ask people what they were thankful for. I notice how difficult it could be for people to verbalize what they were grateful for. We take things for granted that we do not realize that everything is grace, and that we receive everything we have freely from the loving hands of God. For example, we get accustomed to good health that we do not realize to what extent people are willing to go to regain their health or stay healthy. Today, permit me to ask you, “What are you thankful for?” Do you consider that there is someone deserving of your gratitude or do you take favors done to you for granted? There is a saying among the Yoruba people of Nigeria, “Not to be grateful for favors received is to have stolen them.” Rendered differently, “The ungrateful person is worse than a thief.” It is appropriating what one had received as though one had a right to it. [Click to read more]

This weekend we celebrate the Feast of our patroness, St. Thérèse, the Little Flower of Jesus (October 1). We thank all who joined in praying the Novena leading up to this feast day. We also were blessed with the opportunity to spend time with our Eucharistic Lord in adoration. Thanks to all who visited whether for a short time or for a long period. Like our heavenly patroness, we too are friends of Jesus. And our friendship grows every time we spend time with him. [Click to read more]

The prophet Amos champions the cause of the poor and speaks of God’s displeasure for injustice against the poor. He is relentless in preaching that wrongs perpetrated against the poor always have repercussions. In this weekend’s first reading, Amos communicates God’s word to the oppressors of the poor that they would be taken into exile not only for actively perpetrating injustice against the poor, but for neglecting to come to their help. We see this repeated in the Gospel story of Lazarus and the rich man. [Click to read more]

I ask that you ponder on the readings for this weekend. Both the First and Gospel readings challenge us to evaluate our attitude to money or material possession. Money is the major contender with God for human hearts. Jesus said, “you cannot serve both God and mammon” (Luke 16:13)... [Click to read more]

The people who came out of Egypt (First Reading) rejoiced at their liberation from slavery, but this joy was short lived. No sooner had they left Egypt than they craved what they perceived to be the good life of Egypt. Their greed and insatiable desires pushed Moses to the edge. They lost sight of God’s promise of freedom and plenty because they wanted things to work according to their own schedule and timing. They wanted to be like the nations that surrounded them, and they wanted a God they could domesticate, rather than a transcendent reality whom they had no grip on. [Click to read more]

The Sacrifice of Christ 8. To begin to comprehend the tremendous gift offered by Christ through his Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection, that gift that is made present to us in the Eucharist, we must first realize how truly profound is our alienation from the Source of all life as a result of sin. We have abundant experience of evil, yet so many of us deny the cause of much of that evil—our own selfishness, our own sins. As St. John wrote in his first letter, If we say, “we are without sin,” we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us (1 Jn 1:8). 9. Sin is an offense against God, a failure to love God and our neighbor that wounds our nature and injures human solidarity.

This weekend’s readings speak about the difficulty associated with prophetic ministry. It is fraught with danger for the prophet. Jeremiah was persecuted and rejected (First Reading), and Our Lord Jesus tells us that rejection comes with following him. Some people might have difficulty reconciling a Jesus who preached peace and reconciliation with the one speaking in this weekend’s gospel. We might wonder why Jesus is saying he has come for war rather than for peace, to stir up strife within families, rather than mend relationships. However, this is not the sense Jesus is communicating to his listeners in the gospel... [Read more here]