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Sunday, May 3, 2015

I AM THE TRUE VINE

Sermon by Rev. John Paul Shea
Fifth Sunday of Easter, May 3, 2015
Saints Peter and Paul Parish, Tucson, AZ
On this fifth Sunday of Easter, we hear of a special vine and its branches. 

Meditating on today’s Gospel passage 
(John 15:1-8), we are given the opportunity to reflect on the importance of having a strong relationship with Our Lord so that we can strive to become fully human -- all who He calls us to be. 

Our Lord tells His disciples,
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower… You are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.”

Our Lord' words emphasize our need to deepen our relationship with Jesus. Jesus is the Vine, the true Vine. He is the Word made flesh, the union of the human and divine natures. 

Our Lord has come into our world so that we can we can share in the life of His divinity. He has come to give us life within us so that we

may not perish but have life everlasting! 

Yet, we are told that if we want to live with God in His Spirit, then we are called to make changes in our lives now. 

Our Lord reminds us that His Father
“takes away every branch in Him that does not bear fruit, and every one that does He prunes.” 

We all have seen a tree or bush before and after it has been pruned… Before it is pruned the tree has all wild branches and thistles. Yet, when it is pruned, it is cut to a small size and grows back very healthy. The dead branches are cut off, and the wild branches are trimmed. 

This is what God must do if His grace will live inside us. We must allow God in our lives to cut off what is not of His Kingdom and prune what comes from this world. We must die to our old sinful nature so that we can live in the Spirit of truth and goodness.  

When we hear and accept the word of Our Lord, He already prunes us.  However, this life-giving bond with the vine must not be taken for granted! Our life of union begins at baptism, but it is not perfected yet. 

Being pruned hurts. We go against our fallen nature.  God is clipping away our bad habits and lifestyles that go against holiness and the natural law in which He created us. 

You see, each one of us was born into original sin. Sin has brought corruption into our human nature. We are wounded. We have inclinations or innate tendencies for fleshly appetites that lead us away from living as God created us to live in our original innocence. 

Jesus has come to save us from sin, but we each have disordered passions or habits that God is calling us to strive to overcome. 

Sin means we are missing the mark. We are not living the full holiness and happiness for which we were created. Not only that, but sin separates us from God. Sin removes us from the vine of His grace. Jesus said,
“Anyone who does not remain in me will be thrown out like a branch and wither. People will gather them into a fire and they will be burned.” 

Hell is a real place, and we are reminded of this truth time and time again throughout the Gospels. But Our Lord does not want anyone to go there. This is why he died on the cross. 

God created our minds and our bodies to be holy. He created us to use our intellect and our physical nature for His proper order in our humanity. Our Lord has come to point us to this reality so that we can repent and change our lives… He calls us to deny our sinful nature and take up our cross and follow Him!

Being pruned hurts, but it is worth it. God wants to make us into something great! God wants to form us as a diamond is cut, shaped, and polished to look beautiful. 

God invites us to be part of His very being, one with Him in His Son. 

But we must remain in the Lord: “Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me.” 

Fr. John Paul Shea
My brothers and sisters, we live in a time where there are a lot of temptations that pull us away from a deep relationship with God.

Therefore Our Lord calls us today more than ever to strive to live in His grace. We live in grace by receiving Him frequently in the Eucharist. We come to understand His grace through daily prayer,  reading Scripture and living our lives in conformity to the Word of God. We experience Our Lord’s grace by acknowledging our sins and by going to the Sacrament of Confession. We feel our Lord’s grace when we love others and not tear them apart.
As we come to receive Our Lord in the Holy Eucharist this day, let us seek a strong relationship with Jesus so that we can become a fruitful branch -- all He calls us to be and remain with Him forever in eternity.

Did you enjoy this homily? There are more. 

Friday, May 1, 2015

The Hardest Thing

By Christopher Ziegler



Learning how to be loved is the hardest thing I’ve done.
Not learning how to love, but how to be loved.

I was a failure—an undeserving fool. 
My life was a self-made wreck.

Yet, you loved me.

I wept with anguish—and you heard me.
You spoke a gentle word and gave a gentle touch.

When you touched me—my body sang with pleasures.
You delivered me from my misery—even my extreme misery.
You have loved me more than I ever loved myself.

Years of regret you washed away.
Whole decades of regret—are gone.
All my lonely nights are only memories now.

Christopher Ziegler can be
found @CZWriting 
I wish I had a heart that could love you,
The way you deserve to be loved.
I wish I knew a way to serve you,
The way you deserve to be served.








Let me pour forth my love for you
In every word spoken, in every thought thought,
In every deed done and in every day—until I die.

I cannot forget you—I feel you in my bones.


Did you enjoy this piece? Maybe you'd like to read Christopher Ziegler's thoughtful piece:  The Sadness of Socialism 



Thursday, April 30, 2015

Genderless "Marriage" Threatens the Foundation of Civilization

by Lawrence Fox

The fruitful bonding between man and woman is the most fundamental form of original justice.


Justice is the promotion of the proper order of things. In a just society, human beings have a harmonious relationship with one another -- male and female, Creator and creation all work together and flourish.

As a result of this form of justice, society exists. Families are formed, tribal bonds are established, and nations arise.  Civilizations were created from this original justice – the fruitful bonding between man and woman.

Several years ago, I was listening to two lawyers debate the legality of California’s Proposition 8, which amended the state’s Constitution in 2008 to re-affirm marriage as a form (thing in itself) consisting of one man and one woman.
Proposition 8 was a grass root response of the voters of California to reject outlaw courts legalizing same sex “marriage.” Thirty-three other U.S. states passed pro-marriage amendments and legislation. All these states rejected the notion of courts arbitrarily equating the act of sodomy between two men or two women as a form of natural justice.

The American people’s fervent response in favor of traditional marriage was ethnically and religiously diverse and quite prescient. Africans, Caucasians, Hispanics, Protestants, Catholics, and Mormons all fought side by side to preserve the fruitful bonding between one man and one woman as an original justice.


They recognized that courts demanding the recognition of same-sex coupling would completely trample the consciences of individuals formed by natural law (reason) and religion (faith). The rights of children to be conceived naturally and raised by father and mother would be eliminated.

The plethora of lawsuits brought forward by LGBT lawyers against photographers, bakers, fertility specialists, and
Aaron & Melissa Klein, whose bakery was closed
 after they refused to bake a cake for a same sex "wedding"
ceremony, have been fined $135,000 by the state
of Oregon. The fine is a tax on their religious beliefs, and
will have to be paid out of resources intended to support
their five children.
owners of social halls in the last several years has proven the electorate correct. The increase in bizarre forms of surrogacy resulting from homosexuals attempting to legitimize their lifestyles by manufacturing children is already poisoning our society.

Throughout human history whenever the fruitful bond between male and female was broken, other forms of injustices grew -- patricide, matricide, infanticide, fratricide and in some cases the complete disappearance of whole civilizations. Spartans decided that the elements of war were perfect, and everything else subservient. Hence they promoted homosexual unions among themselves to the denigration of the original justice of the male female bond.

No longer seen on planet earth: Spartans
Acceptance of homosexual unions destroyed their
civilization 
Shortly after that, their society was gone. Families no longer bonded. Eugenics invaded their thinking, and their imperfect infants were killed. Everything became the property of the state. And then the state disappeared.

This is what is facing America today. Same sex “marriage” is an attack on original justice. It is an attack on the nature of man himself, and the harmonious relations between male
and female, man and creation, and man and Creator.

It seeks to establish as normative the unfruitful bonding of men and men to the exclusion of women. And it establishes  the unfruitful bonding of women and women to the exclusion of men. Eventually, this attack on original justice will permeate all of our society, changing the way man will view himself. 

Everything will be legally open to reinterpretation and abuse. 
We will exit history the same way that the Spartan did. Spartans loved war. We love technology, which allows us to recreate ourselves. It makes us younger, changes our gender and manufactures our children, and puts to death the unwanted products of our lust.  Our society is rapidly approaching a state of extreme injustice – technologically savvy with no human dignity.

Sadly, it seems the grass root electorate supporting traditional marriage might as well have saved their breath. They are largely ignored now as the U.S. Supreme Court reaches a final decision on the issue of same-sex “marriage” due in June.

This is how it came to be.

The “First Gay President” Barack Obama (a distinction made by Newsweek Magazine) instructed his Attorney General, Mr. Eric Holder, NOT to defend the U.S. Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Defense of Marriage was passed by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by Democratic President Bill Clinton in 1996. It allows states to refuse to recognize same-sex “marriages” granted under the laws of other states.

The Attorney General, who is legally required to uphold laws passed by Congress, would not come to the defense of states whose laws were attacked by LGBT lawyers in unruly courts. Obama, who supposedly majored in constitutional law at Harvard University, identified the complete overthrow of traditional marriage as “justice.”

According to David Axelrod, Obama secretly supported same sex “marriage” prior to his running for President. He was
Obama hid his support for same-sex "marriage"
when running for president
in order to gain the black vote 
advised to hide this fact so that the black electorate in the Bible Belt would show greater enthusiasm for his candidacy. His so called “evolving position on gay marriage” was a manufactured lie.

A court here and a court there demanded same sex coupling. I am always dismayed by the inability of seemingly good federal and state leadership to annunciate the absolute hypocrisy of courts on these matters. The courts argue that they are implementing “a living document.”

Americans believe in a living document, it is called the “Amendment Process.” Such is constitutional, and not lawless. The states amended their constitutions to demonstrate Marriage is an institution, which existed prior to the sodomy-driven courts. It was and is a universally recognized institution between man and woman even in the most remote jungles of the world. The marriage between a man and a woman has been the foundation of surviving civilizations. 

Judges do not have the power to make any document “living.” That is one of the biggest lies forced on Americans in the past 40 years.  Judges don’t make law. They adjudicate existing law.

Lawyers debating the legality of Prop 8 are arguing that the amendment process is not constitutional unless the results are rubber-stamped by lawless black robes. Irrational judges now enslave the electorate under such a system.

One of the lawyers I heard debating Prop 8 said marriage was expressed in diverse forms throughout human history, including arranged marriages, polygamy, incest, common law, and communal sharing of women within primitive tribes. It was argued that few cultures maintained the “ideal” concept of marriage, that is a monogamous lifetime union between one man and one woman.

Since marriage within human history was fraught with inconsistencies, the notion that people in California or any state for that matter would seek to preserve a standard for marriage seemed unconstitutional to these justices; and, in fact, it seemed like an attack on the ever-evolving “Equal Protection under the Law” in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

It is my understanding that a man cannot enter into a marriage with multiple wives and that bigamy is a crime in all 50 States. Currently, a man cannot enter into a marriage with his mother, sister, or daughter. Incest is a crime in all 50 States. It is only logical based upon the irrational musings of the lawyer supporting same sex “marriage” that all such prohibitions against sexual vagrancies are unconstitutional.

Every American is free to share domestic interests with other adult persons. Marriage laws are not unjust; instead the moral sensibilities of so many Americans have changed. The honest observer recognizes that the demand for same-sex marriage flows -- not from the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s -- but from the culture of death.

Under the guise of human rights, the government promotes abortion on demand, contraception, no fault divorce, pornography, doctor-assisted suicide, drug legalization, and the wholesale manufacture of children apart from normative conjugal relations between a man and a woman. The consequence of such moral collapse is now summed up by the statement “Let everyone choose for themselves what is marriage.”

When the good polygamous people of Utah in 1852 asked the U.S. Government to grant them admission to the Union, the government said that Utah had to outlaw polygamy, fundamentally establishing the fruitful bond of one man and one woman as a standard expression of social and moral justice.  The Obama Administration, progressive legislators, and the courts -- demonstrating an abysmal hatred for U.S. History -- ignored such a fact.

I was waiting with bated breath for the lawyer in support of Prop 8 to state, “Yes, the institution of marriage has experienced various forms throughout human history. Yet, in spite of pressures, which obscured virtue and diminished justice, it is self-evident that the bonding of man and woman heroically remained the essential form of marriage.”

Further, I hoped he would say, “Arguments in favor of ‘state sanctioned sodomy’ do not preserve equal justice under the law, but instead discriminate in marriage against the male
(lesbian coupling); the female (homosexual coupling), and the child, who no longer has the right to a father and a mother.”

Courts bless newly "married" same sex couple and adopted child
 (AP Photo)
In other words, I hoped the lawyer would say, “The bonding of man and woman as a micro-foundation for the existence of society is still necessary in America and that such an experiment as same-sex “marriage” cannot be implemented by un-elected judges, who won’t be around to live through the consequences.”

When I hear people argue, “Same sex marriage does not impact my marriage,” I lament that another couple has publically admitted that they are fundamentally cohabitating, and they wasted their money on a marriage license.

The advocacy of this new social madness through the lawless courts has precedence.

The Supreme Court led by Chief Justice Warren Burger in  “Roe Versus Wade” legalized abortion in 1973 based on the fact – in part -- that the Roman Empire sanctioned abortion prior to its collapse. It never occurred to the Burger Court that the Roman Empire also sanctioned human trafficking, human sacrifice, and the murder of philosophers and Christians – also prior to its collapse. In other words, the court interpreted the U.S. Constitution as embracing the barbaric practices of ancient cultures.

It turns out that Supreme Court Justice William Blackmun -- who wrote the Roe v Wade majority opinion in support of abortion -- was in favor of abortion on demand due to his daughter’s college experiences: “My daughter found herself pregnant while in college and due to the scarcity of legal abortion, her education was interrupted,” he said. My response would have been “Judge, what does your daughter’s pregnancy have to do with interpreting federal or state constitutions?” The answer is nothing.

Federal judges are overthrowing state constitutions on the issue of abortion and same sex “marriage” because judicial interpretation in our time has nothing to do with reality.

The foundations of post-modern American constitutional law are rooted purely in sophistry and solipsism, which maintains that truth exists only in the will of the subject and not in the concrete reality of the existence of the object.

Look at this statement made by Justice Anthony Kennedy in 1992 in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey:  "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life."

A spoiled child lives within Kennedy’s definition of liberty. Tragically, as the Supreme Court listens to arguments in favor of same sex “marriage,” it is Justice Kennedy, who will become the swing vote on the court. 

This is the same court, which said in 1973 that each person can determine for himself who has the right to live and who doesn't.  Now they are trying to define marriage the same way – allowing each person to define marriage to utmost limits of his own imagination.
Same Sex couple Jayne Rowse and April DeBoer outside the U.S. Supreme Court on April 28 when
hearings were held that will determine the outcome of Traditional Marriage in the United States. Rowse and DeBoer are one of the couples challenging Michigan's ban on same sex "marriage."