Sep 16 – Homily – Fr Elias: Flintstone Catholics
Views 1598
Homily #120916b (
23min) Play- Fr. Elias exhorts us to become Flintstone Catholics, setting our face like flint to be able pick up our crosses and follow in the footsteps of Christ. This was prefigured by Isaiah and this attitude of firm willingness to suffer with Christ is the only way to persevere and grow in our faith in the face of ridicule, temptation and moral relativism.Ave Maria!
Mass: 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Sunday - Form: OF
Readings:
1st: isa 50:4-9
Resp: psa 116:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 8-9
2nd: jam 2:14-18
Gsp: mar 8:27-35
Audio (MP3)+++
Thank you Father, for this pure, unadulterated Catholic teaching. I see all around in our diocese, which is far from where you are, that many of our Mass-attending Catholics use the church as a type of social club, and still demand that they themselves can pick and choose what they can and will do according to whatever pleases their own tastes.
Many of them are in positions of authority, especially as teachers in the diocesan school system. And they encourage one another that it is right for them to please themselves, and have turned the true cross into something to be avoided at any cost, a sign of failure; and they make false crosses out of not being able to get whatever they want in every circumstance.
In a way, I see it as the further ‘prostestantization’ of so much of our Catholic worship and theology. And we are, indeed, hard-pressed to find any priest who is willing (or perhaps clear enough is his understanding of Truth) to teach the fullness of the faith to us. What we receive is a type of protestant theology, mixed in with the Holy Sacraments of the Church. It’s as if they were playing a type of game for their own social entertainment and satisfaction.
I hope that you will pray for us, for my family which has been broken apart due to the false theology and ‘half-presented’ (half-baked one might say) teachings that are such a large part of our Catholic experience in this diocese and its parishes. I am experiencing a rather difficult illness and am following and trusting in our God Who can deliver me and my family from these troubled times, when this type of hedonistic heresy is so much an unfortunate part of what is taught by example and manipulation within our parish communities.
And it is not always so much what they say in speech regarding the faith, as what they leave out of their speech concerning Jesus Christ, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. This is, again, partly what I see as a type of protestant influence in the church. They demand all the consolations and pleasures of the Catholic faith, without adhering to the demands of the fullness of Her teachings when their experience calls for holy and loving suffering.
Please pray for us, and I will pray and thank God for the Truth that we receive from the priests and the teachers here on AirMaria.
Ave Maria! And peace to men of good will.