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Feeling Silly Today?Or, are you feeling out of sorts and just need a dose? Here is what is on the agenda for today - June 26th: Beautician's Day Beautician's Day is your chance to show your appreciation to those who make you look beautiful and stunning. Beauticians include your hair stylist, as well as manicurists. Their talents and training transforms the everyday you into the beautiful woman you always knew was inside of you. They make you glow, and feel great about yourself. The guys appreciate your Beautician, too. Proof positive is when they turn to watch as you...

The families of the victims in the church shootings just adressed the killer in court on live TV-One after the other they asked for God to have mercy on his soul-some even forgave him. It was profound. God is speaking to us through these family members . God bless and comfort them.

Forgive All Injuries – A Meditation on the Sixth Spiritual Work of Mercy By: Msgr. Charles PopeOf all the things about which I preach, very few (if any) provoke as strong (and usually negative) a reaction as the call to forgive. I get more angry pushback after a Mass at which I preach on forgiveness than when I speak about chastity, greed, or any other challenging moral topic.It would seem that the anger is rooted in two things: first, that the call to forgive implies some dishonoring or diminishing of the pain or injustice someone has experienced, and second, that it seems to imply that there...

All pardon for sins ultimately comes from Christ’s finished work on Calvary, but how is this pardon received by individuals? Did Christ leave us any means within the Church to take away sin? The Bible says he gave us two means.

Forgive Offenses Willingly Mark P. SheaThe forgiveness of sins, said the Fathers of the Church, is a greater miracle than the creation of the universe. That seems exaggerated, when considered from our perspective. A Catholic does something he feels ashamed of, hies himself to Confession, goes in the little room with the priest, and comes out a few minutes later. Sometimes he stops for a quick penance prayer in the pew. Sometimes he’s off like a shot to his next Saturday afternoon appointment. To the naked eye, it’s hard to see something akin to God hurling the Andromeda Galaxy...

Is God Angry Anymore? by Jim Elliff     When I was in public high school, we had to read part of a famous sermon called Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, by Jonathan Edwards. He graphically pictured sinners as spiders dangling by a thread over the fire of Hell. He also asserted that God is angrier at this moment with some who are living than with others who are already in Hell.Do you believe that? Is God angry? I don’t believe my teacher thought so. When I later studied the Bible on the subject, I was...

A cartoon depicted Noah’s ark surrounded by desperate people drowning in the water, begging for help. The rains were coming down hard while Noah and his family were safe inside. On the outside of the ark was a "smiley face" with the words, "Smile, God Loves You."Are you sure God loves everybody? John the Baptist didn’t think so. He said, "He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him" (Jn. 3:36). Why is God justified in having wrath toward...

Lines from the Lord's Prayer, in various languages. From the Eucharist Door at the Glory Facade of the Sagrada Família in Barcelona, Spain. It's Lent in Rome. That means it's time for one of the great Roman traditions: station churches. Each morning, English-speaking pilgrims walk to a different church for Mass. This morning, on the way to St. Anastasia's, I was once again struck by a line in the Our Father: “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” That's a hard thing to pray, It doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room. Even the Catechism...

 “[Mankind] is under condemnation: ‘As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one’ (Rom. 3:10-12). Man is not on trial; he is a culprit under sentence. No pleading will avail; no excuses will be accepted. The present issue between God and the sinner is, will man bow to God’s righteous verdict?This is where the Gospel meets us. It comes to us as to...

But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit… (Titus 3:5) How beautifully the apostle in these strong words extols the grace of God bestowed in baptism! He refers to baptism as a washing, whereby not our feet only, not our hands, but our whole bodies are cleansed. Baptism perfectly and instantaneously cleanses and saves. For the vital part of salvation and its inheritance, nothing more is necessary...

Image source: Shutterstock I wanted to take my bride out for a night without the kids.  As it turned out, I had a free night in one of the hotel chains I use when I travel on business, and it was set to expire on March 3, so I had to work fast.  I also had a gift card for a local fine dining restaurant I received as a Christmas gift.  Thus my el-cheapo, very expensive date night plans began to gel. We dropped the kiddos off at their grandparents (who had given us two “night of babysitting” certificates...

The Sunday of Forgiveness, the last of the preparatory Sundays before Great Lent, has two themes: it commemorates Adam’s expulsion from Paradise, and it accentuates our need for forgiveness. There are obvious reasons why these two things should be brought to our attention as we stand on the threshold of Great Lent. One of the primary images in the Triodion is that of the return to Paradise. Lent is a time when we weep with Adam and Eve before the closed gate of Eden, repenting with them for the sins that have deprived us of our free communion with God....

On Dec. 25, the unforgettable story about Louis Zamperini, an Olympian turned World War II prisoner of war hero, opens in theaters nationwide. As astoundingly resilient as Zamperini was, however, his real power was found in a fact underplayed in the movie; namely, he whose birth we celebrate Dec. 25 is the one responsible for restoring and transforming Zamperini's heart and life. First, let me say, few lives can compare with Zamperini's. He lived hard from a young age. He smoked cigarettes by the time he was 5, and his favorite pastime as a youth was stealing beer from bootleggers.Cops...

In Latin America, they're pulling millions of faithful away from the Catholic Church. But the pope has only words of friendship for them. This is his way of doing ecumenism, unveiled here in two of his video messages by Sandro Magister ROME, November 19, 2014 - With the mastery for which it is known all over the world, the Washington-based Pew Research Center has conducted a survey on a massive scale that gives substance to a fact that was already known in general terms, the startling decline of Catholic membership in the Latin American subcontinent:> Religion in Latin America. Widespread...

 Father Jeremy Leatherby  Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Parish, Sacramento CA Podcast kofc15693.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/ChaplainsReport11-11-2014.mp3 A relatively brief thought: For some reason, this has been coming up quite a in the last couple of months, on forgiveness. A priest friend in Slovakia shared a story with my brother-in-law, Father Farrell, that he had given a homily on the need to forgive. A lady come up to him after Mass and said, "Father, based on what you said, I realized that there is something I've never let go of. "Twenty-five years ago, a man broke into my home and raped me. I've never been able to forgive...

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: Whoever lives beneath the cross of Jesus, and has discerned in the cross of Jesus the utter ungodliness of all people and of their own hearts, will find there is no sin that can ever be unfamiliar. Whoever has once been appalled by the horror of their own sin, which nailed Jesus to the cross, will no longer be appalled by even the most serious sin of another Christian; rather they know the human heart from the cross of Jesus. Such persons know how totally lost is the human heart in sin and weakness, how it...

I "AM" your Paradise search no further for truly if the Israelites realized this in the desert I would have been their Canaan as wholeheartedly as they would have received me even then and so it is for you even now for I AM The Wind of Fire and Breath of Tongues for you even unto forever and not just on a day (Pentecost) for I AM ~abiding~ in your WellSpring , so simply let Me "Rise Up" for your Testimony of ME "IS" the spark that starts the FIRE and I AM your Burning Bush and VOICE ! Joshua...

Seventeen years after her brother Ron’s brutal murder, Kim Goldman wrote to O.J. Simpson in jail. “I’m sure it’s really weird to be getting a letter but you’ve been on my mind recently,” Goldman, 42, wrote in 2011. “I realize our few interactions have not been great — but I am wondering if you would grant me a visitation, to let me get to know the real you.” It was a stunning act of forgiveness, and it was just that — an act. Her real goal was to savor the sight of the disgraced gridiron great humiliated in prison, she...

Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.(Isaiah 53:12)The last verse of this fourth Servant Song has always struck me as anti-climatic. But this is because I believe the King James version confuses the meaning somewhat, for it reads as though the Servant takes his place among other great and strong ones. But the according to evangelical scholar Alec Motyer,...

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.(Isaiah 53:4-6)We have been looking at the 4th Servant Song from the book of the prophet Isaiah.It seems that the Song is divided into...