Okay, let’s do this. We need a dog friends thread.
This is Marius with Hans. They were inseparable.
Hans is with the Lord now.
He belonged to my brother Paul.
This is Marius and his buddy Boris.
He’s much bigger now but Marius took good care of him when he was a puppy.
He belongs to my niece Livia.
“The Lord is near, do not be anxious about anything”
This is the reminder and the challenge.
My sins & limitations make me anxious;
I simply don’t know how to do it all.
“The Lord is near, do not be anxious about anything”
I fret. I worry.
I worry about my family, the church, our country.
“The Lord is near, do not be anxious about anything”
The devil wants me angry, anxious & afraid.
The marketers of these things fill my life with news of the failings of others, they use Jesus as their excuse, not their cause and
so many good people get swallowed up in the insanity.
“The Lord is near, do not be anxious about anything”
There is much out there calling for my time & attention.
In the midst of it is the gentle,
but persistent voice of The Lord,
calling out too me:
To my Brother priests,
That tweet from @Bishopoftyler honoring the priest disobeying his Bishop & fighting hard for the theology of the Republican Party absolutely broke my heart.
I’ve learned a lot in almost 22 years as a priest, but few things more important than this:
You can love and serve the bride of Christ as faithfully and diligently as you want, but she will never love you back.
She will spend all of her energy telling priests in trouble that they are valuable and running you into the ground.
It’s heartbreaking.
Today, I left my one day off to drive an hour back simply to be with a woman as she died, To comfort her family and to guide her safely home.
I don’t say this to be honored, I promise.
I say it because I suspect I’m more like you than the priest that Bishop chose to honor today.
Folks, I'd like to take a moment and comment on mask wearing at mass.
I'm in a position as a priest where I hear from a lot of priests and I have to tell you, our madness is damaging our clergy greatly. We have priests who are pushed to the breaking point because of people's
personal convictions about masks.
For me personally, every week, I am sent messages chastising me for not forbidding entrance to people for not wearing masks and I get it.
But, to be clear, I'm also getting angry/hurt messages from peopleabout getting kicked out of a Church or
forbidden entrance to a Church because of a lack of room or mask issues and I get that too.
Do you see the impossible spot your priests are in?
As Pastors, we end up with two choices: 1. Kick people out or forbid them entrance 2. Remind people every week to wear masks and
So, Joel Osteen did a Joe Osteen thing and found a way to get more money in the name of Jesus, this time from the federal government.
Now, Twitter is filled with the perpetually enraged calling for Catholic Churches to be taxed.
Let's talk this through, shall we?
One of my parishes is among the largest in our diocese, with one of the largest budgets in the diocese.
With that,If we were a business, we still wouldn't qualify for taxes. Why?
Because we don't make money.
We pay our employees, care for the poor and nothing is left afterward.
When the quarantine happened, we couldn't take collections.
Because we couldn't take collections, we couldn't pay our over 100 employees.
Even with this, we doubled down our commitment to help the poor & vulnerable.
The PPP loan allowed us to pay our employees, who then didn't go
Death is a significant part of my life; I'm around it everyday. When someone dies, your time with them on earth is done; you cannot have it back.
The wounds death brings on those left behind can be soothed, but never healed.
With that, I offer this:
Call or visit your parents. Particularly if they are in a nursing home, make contact with them. Notes on their room window, singing to them from outside, whatever it takes.
If they are home, call them, text them, visit them. Thank them, honor them, love them. Treasure them.
If you are in a contentious situation with a sibling or parent, take a moment and ask yourself what you would feel if they died today and then respond accordingly.
Not all relationships should be reconciled, I totally get that, but those situations are rare.
Earlier, I posted a tweet about the pain many of my parishioners have endured mourning their sick or dying family without being able to be present.
I posted it as a response to yet another video of tens of thousands of people gathering in protest.
The responses shocked me: lots of retweets & favorites, some death threats, even numerous notifications that people were attempting to access my passwords.
Some people politely disagreed, some people not so much.
Some people exuberantly agreed, others obnoxiously so.
I’m deleting it now because of the violence that’s begun to seep into the responses: people actually threatening each other.
At some point, if we don’t figure out how to disagree and dialogue, our Republic will die.