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Homilies Updated

2/22/2016

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I am pleased to let you all know that my Sunday homilies have been updated. They  are current through last Sunday 21 February 2016. I hope that you find them helpful. They are also sorted by date and each year has its own page. Happy listening.
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It's the middle of Advent

12/13/2014

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Wow, how quickly time goes by. We are halfway through Advent and Christmas is just around the corner. My first Christmas as a Priest of Jesus Christ. I am so excited to celebrate the Birth of our Lord.

 I have gotten behind in the posting of my homilies. Sorry about that. Converting them to a “You Tube” format takes a bit of time on each and I just haven’t taken the time to do it. Thus, I have all of my homilies on CD, I just have to convert them. I am hoping to get this done over the next couple of weeks. “Cause the Christmas season is so relaxing!!

I just finished posting my most recent columns from our bulletin. Check them out HERE.

I hope that you are all enjoying you Advent and preparations for Christmas. I wish you a blessed Advent and pray that the peace of Christ will be with you all on Christmas morning.


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Veteran's Day - Thank Them for Our Freedom

11/11/2014

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Today is Veteran’s Day. I hope that each of us takes the time to reflect on the great sacrifices that our Veterans have made for us. Not just those who died, but all Veterans. They have sacrificed time away from home, time with their families, comfort, security and much more for us and our freedom. Scripture says “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:13) Each Veteran is someone who, at one point in his life, wrote a blank check made payable to The United States of America for an amount of “up to and including my life.”

To my brothers in arms, to the Airmen, Soldiers, Sailors and Marines, I say “THANK YOU!” Thank you for all that you have done for me and my country. May God continue to bless each of you. To those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice – May they Rest in Peace.

While it is not yet Christmas, I think the following expresses the sentiments for Veteran’s Day well.

T’was the night before Christmas,
He lived all alone,
In a one bedroom house made of
Plaster and stone.

I had come down the chimney
With presents to give,
And to see just who
In this home did live.

I looked all about,
A strange sight I did see,
No tinsel, no presents,
Not even a tree.


No stocking by mantle,
Just boots filled with sand,
On the wall hung pictures
Of far distant lands.

With medals and badges,
Awards of all kinds,
A sober thought
Came through my mind.

For this house was different,
It was dark and dreary,
I found the home of a soldier,
Once I could see clearly.

The soldier lay sleeping,
Silent, alone,
Curled up on the floor
In this one bedroom home.

The face was so gentle,
The room in such disorder,
Not how I pictured
A United States soldier.

Was this the hero
Of whom I'd just read?
Curled up on a poncho,
The floor for a bed?

I realized the families
That I saw this night,
Owed their lives to these soldiers
Who were willing to fight.

Soon round the world,
The children would play,
And grownups would celebrate
A bright Christmas day.

They all enjoyed freedom
Each month of the year,
Because of the soldiers,
Like the one lying here.

I couldn't help wonder
How many lay alone,
On a cold Christmas eve
In a land far from home.

The very thought
Brought a tear to my eye,
I dropped to my knees
And started to cry.

The soldier awakened
And I heard a rough voice,
"Santa don't cry,
This life is my choice;

I fight for freedom,
I don't ask for more,
My life is my God,
My Country, my Corps."

The soldier rolled over
And drifted to sleep,
I couldn't control it,
I continued to weep.

I kept watch for hours,
So silent and still
And we both shivered
From the cold night's chill.

I didn't want to leave
On that cold, dark, night,
This guardian of honor
So willing to fight.

Then the soldier rolled over,
With a voice soft and pure,
Whispered, "carry on Santa,
It's Christmas Day, all is secure."

One look at my watch,
And I knew he was right.
"Merry Christmas my friend,
And to all a good night."

 

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Fascinating Video - A Must See

11/8/2014

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I came across this fascinating video that I wanted to share with all of you. I never ceases to amaze me how wonderful God has made our world and how intricately He designed it. This 4 ½  minute video is well worth the time. I think you will find it as fascinating as I did. I hope you enjoy it.

I would love to hear your thought about the video. Just click the "comments" link above.


How Wolves Change Rivers

www.hypersmash.com/hostgator/
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Good Morning,

11/3/2014

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This is just a quick entry as we begin a new wonderful and blessed week. Over the weekend, I was able to upload my ordination and First Mass videos and pictures. I have created a new page for them that can be found HERE. Also, this week’s column has been added. There is no homily since here at St. Dominic Parish the deacons preach the first weekend of each month.

As we begin November please remember, in a particular way, to pray for the dead. On that note there are indulgences available for praying for the dead and visiting a cemetery. I have noted the particulars in this week’s column which can be found HERE.

I pray that you all have a wonderful and blessed week ahead.
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I am back...as a Priest!

10/20/2014

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Well, after a year plus, I am back and I hope to be able to maintain this site much better than my previous attempts. As you may already know, I was ordained to the Catholic Priesthood on June 7, 2014. The good news is that I am done with seminary. The better news is that I am a PRIEST!! I am now assigned to St. Dominic Catholic Church in Security, Colorado. If you are in the area, please feel free to stop by and say “Hi”. While the rigors of academia are over, the demands of being a parish priest have begun. It is like life at light speed and I am enjoying every minute of it.

Over the next few weeks I will be adding new material to my website here such as a page for my recorded Sunday homilies, new photos and a few other ideas I am thinking about. I hope that the content and a more timely updated blog will peak your interest and bring more readers on board. For you dedicated fans (All 3 of you J) thank you for sticking with me.

This is all for now as I want to update other parts of my site (like changing the word “Deacon” to “priest”). I wish you all a wonderful day and I hope to chat more with you soon.
 
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Evil is Proof of God

6/10/2013

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A friend of mine and brother seminarian who also happens to be a fellow apologist has posted and excellent article on evil and the problem atheists have when they try to use it to prove there is no God. You know, the age old arguments that if God is all-powerful, He could stop evil and if He is all-loving, He would stop evil; thus since there is evil, there is no God. Anyway, it is an excellent article so I am reposting it here for your perusal. Joe also has an excellent blog called Shameless Popery. I encourage you to visit it.

Many atheists are fond of using the argument from evil to debunk the notion of God. It goes something like this:

  1. If God is all-powerful (omnipotent), He could stop evil.
  2. If God is all-loving (omnibenevolent), He would stop evil if He could.
  3. Therefore, if an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God existed, evil would not.
  4. Evil exists; therefore, an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God does not.
Another variation of the argument was put forward by the Greek philosopher Epicurus, centuries before the time of Christ:

Against Catholics, this argument is stronger rhetorically than logically. But against atheists, it's ironically quite devastating. Let me explain what I mean.

I. The Problem of Evil for Catholics 
Logically, this argument misunderstands what's meant by God's omnipotence.Omnipotence means that God cannot possibly be more powerful than He currently is. His power is perfect. But within these traditional confines, we still acknowledge that God cannot do the logically impossible. He cannot, for example, will what is contrary to His Will. Why? Because that's a meaningless self-contradiction.

Herein lies the easiest answer to the problem of evil:

  1. God gives us free will, because free will is inherently good.
  2. Free will entails the possibility of doing what is contrary to God's will (this is what we know as evil).
  3. Thus, evil exists, because of man's actions, rather than because of God.
Thus, the notion of an all-loving God is consistent with abundant free will, and abundant free will is consistent with the presence of evil (I discuss that more on my own blog.) You may disagree with that solution—you may not see why free will is better than God forcing us to perform on command, for example—but it at least shows that there's no logical problem with the simultaneous existence of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God and evil.

II. The Problem of Evil for Atheists 
But today, I wanted to show why this is a particularly bad proof for atheism. It relies (in the fourth point of the argument outlined above) on the proposition “evil exists.” Now there are two things that might be meant by this claim:

  • Subjective evil exists: That is, things exist that I don't happen to like. But if that were the case, the whole argument of evil falls apart. Obviously, an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God might well do or permit things that I happen to dislike. The existence of broccoli and the New York Yankees doesn't discredit God, unless I'm such a narcissist as to think that a loving God would create the universe as best suits my own whims.
  • Objective evil exists: This is what is obviously meant by the problem of evil. Things exist that aren't just contrary to my personal tastes (like broccoli) but which are contrary to what all moral people know to be good (like genocide or the torture of little children).
But here's the problem with that: Objective morality, including objective evil, cannot exist without God. This doesn't mean that atheists can't be moral people, of course. Catholicism teaches that much of objective morality is knowable by natural law. Atheists can and generally do implicitly recognize the moral law, and obey it. The problem is that this behavior appears completely irrational.

More specifically, the problem is that is that there's no way to get from statements about how the world is to how the world ought to be without imposing a value system. And to say something is objective evil—that it objectively ought not to be—you have to believe in objective values, binding everyone (including, in the case of the problem of evil, God Himself). It has to be something infinitely more than whatever your personal values might be.

This, as you can hopefully tell, is a serious problem for atheism, since atheistic naturalism denies any such universally-binding moral laws (since they require Divine Authorship). Christian philosopher William Lane Craig, in his debate with atheist Christopher Hitchens, laid out the problem like this:

  1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.
  2. Objective moral values do exist.
  3. Therefore God exists.
Hitchens misunderstood the argument, and flubbed it pretty badly, so I sought out an atheist response. The atheist responding argues that both of Craig's premises are false:

Firstly, objective morals could well exist without God. They could be hardwired into our genes as an evolutionary survival mechanism. So clearly, Craig’s first premise is incorrect.

Others have used this argument before, but it's quite a bad one. A man might simultaneously be sexually attracted to a non-consenting woman, and conscious that rape is immoral. Why, from a strictly biological standpoint, should the man listen to his genetic hard-wiring when it tells him rape is wrong, and not when it gives him an urge to rape? The answer to that question is a moral one, and one that (by definition) can't come from mere evolutionary urges. The urges are the problem, not the solution.

You can see this with virtually any sin: man both desires sin, and knows it's wrong. If both thedesire and the moral aversion are nothing more than evolutionary conditioning, why listen to the unpleasant one? Why not act like simply another member of the animal kingdom, a world full of rape and theft and killing.

But for that matter, is it morally evil to go against our genetic hard-wiring? If the hard-wiring is nothing more than the result of random chance over millions of years, it's not at all clear to me why it would be morally evil to disregard it. Your body may also decide to start producing cancer cells at a remarkable rate, but you feel no moral allegiance to quietly let it have its way. We constantly subdue our bodies to make them perform better, last longer, and the like.

And indeed, atheists constantly go against their genetic hard-wiring. For example, I'd venture that most atheists use birth control and don't seem to find this immoral, even though it's transparently contrary to both our genetic hard-wiring, and evolutionary survival mechanisms. They're literally stopping evolution from working: a more direct violation of evolutionary hard-wiring is almost unthinkable (except, perhaps, celibacy).

So at most, evolution can explain urges we have for or against certain behaviors. Some of these urges are worth acting upon, some aren't. But to know which to obey and which to ignore is a moral question, not a biological one.

Significantly, when Hitchens eventually understood Craig's argument, he conceded this first premise—because it's undeniably true. That brings us to the second premise, that objective morality exists. The atheist reply continues:

However, objective moral values de facto do not exist. Not everyone has the same moral standards. Our perception of what is right and wrong have changed over the centuries with Richard Dawkins has termed “the shifting moral Zeitgeist”. Indeed, practices in other parts of the World today which are considered the height of piety seem barbaric to Westerners. You only have to look inside the books of our religions and see what these pronouncements mandate to see that this is the case.

If this is true, we cannot criticize the Nazis for killing millions of Jews, any more than we can criticize the Yankees for beating the Tigers. We don't happen to care for Nazi genocide, but their cultural practices are just different from our American values.

More directly, if objective morality does not exist, the problem of evil breaks down. As I said above, if by “evil” you mean nothing more than what you happen to like or dislike, the term is meaningless. So when atheists raise the problem of evil, they're already conceding the existence of objective evil, and thus, of objective morality.

So atheists can either believe that morality is nothing more than a “shifting moral Zeitgeist,” of no more importance than the latest fashion, or they can criticize what's “inside the books of our religions.” But they can't coherently do both.

III. Objective Evil Exists 
Just in case some people reading this would be inclined to give up the problem of evil,in exchange that they don't have to admit the existence of universally binding morals, let me be clear. We can see that objective morals do, in fact, exist. We don't need to be told that raping, torturing, and killing innocent people are more than just unpleasant or counter-cultural. They're wrong—universally and completely wrong. Even if we were never taught these things growing up, we know these things by nature.

Incredibly, even the most evil societies—even those societies that have most cruelly warped the natural law for their own ends—still profess these universal morals. Nazi Germany, for example, still had laws against murder, and theft, and rape. They didn't have some delusion that those things were somehow morally good: it's sheer fiction to suggest otherwise. Everyone, with the possible exceptions of the severely retarded or severely mentally ill, recognizes these things to be evil, whether or not they've been formally taught these truths.

Conclusion 
So is the problem of evil a problem for Christians? Sure. There are intellectually satisfying answers, but it's not for nothing that St. Thomas Aquinas lists it as one of two logical arguments for atheism in the Summa Theologiae. But we shouldn't let this fact blind us to the paradoxical truth:the problem of evil is a dramatically larger problem for atheists:

  1. To complain of the problem of evil, you must acknowledge evil.
  2. To acknowledge evil, you must acknowledge an objective system of moral laws.
  3. Objective universal moral laws require a Lawgiver capable of dictating behavior for everyone.
  4. This Lawgiver is Who we call God.
Ironically, this evidence lays the groundwork for establishing that God not only exists, but cares about good and evil.


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Written by Joe Heschmeyer. Until May 2012, Joe Heschmeyer was an attorney in Washington, D.C., specializing in litigation. These days, he is a seminarian for the Archdiocese of Kansas City, Kansas, and can use all the prayers he can get. Follow Joe through his blog, Shameless Popery or contact him at joseph.heschmeyer@gmail.com.



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MOSQUITO TRAP

6/6/2013

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Here is a little tip I picked up on Facebook. Don't know if it works, but it is worth a try. Let me know how successful you are with this.


HOMEMADE MOSQUITO TRAP:
Items needed:
1 cup of water 
1/4 cup of brown sugar
1 gram of yeast
1 2-liter bottle

HOW:
1. Cut the plastic bottle in half.
2. Mix brown sugar with hot water. Let cool. When cold, pour in the bottom half of the bottle.
3. Add the yeast. No need to mix. It creates carbon dioxide, which attracts mosquitoes.
4. Place the funnel part, upside down, into the other half of the bottle, taping them together if desired.
5. Wrap the bottle with something black, leaving the top uncovered, and place it outside in an area away from your normal gathering area. (Mosquitoes are also drawn to the color black.)

Change the solution every 2 weeks for continuous control.

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New Assignment

6/5/2013

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It is good to be back in a parish!!! Yesterday I started my assignment as St. Joseph the Worker Parish in Southgate (the southern tip of Colorado Springs). It is a parish of about 1,500 families and I am looking forward to my two months here. The pastor, Fr. Gregory Golyzniak has been so very warm and welcoming. I eagerly anticipate this coming Sunday where I get to meet the whole parish.

This being my first week, I am spending the time trying to get settled in, meet the staff and wrap up some leftover items. The Bishop has also been kind enough to allow me to serve as Deacon at some of the Diocesan events this week, so there is no lack of work. As I get adjusted to my new routine, I hope to return to more regular and frequent blogging. Of course, if you have a topic you would like me to address, a question to ask or a suggestion, those are always greatly appreciated. In the mean time, please continue to pray for our Holy Mother Church, Her Clergy, vocations and our men and women in uniform. See you at the Tabernacle!

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Ordination

5/28/2013

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As I slow down to below light speed...

The ordination was WONDERFUL and now the busyness of friends, relatives, receptions and dinners begins to be replaced by the everyday schedule. What a FANTASTIC time the last week has been. Thank you to all who were able to join me for my ordination to the Transitional Diaconate and to all of you who sent in kind words and supported me with prayer.

It seems like the last month has been a blur. I think it started with finals and rapidly accelerated. It is nice to know that I only have one year left at the seminary. I am sure that will go by very quickly and before I know it, I will be writing about my ordination to the Priesthood.

I hope to have pictures of my Ordination back in the near future from the photographer and when I do, I will post them on the site, so stay tuned. I also hope to return to more regular postings once I move into my new assignment. You may also note that the subtitle of this site has changed. Speaking of assignments, I will be serving at St. Joseph the Worker in Southgate (southern Colorado Springs) this summer. I am looking forward to my new assignment.

Thanks again for all the wonderful support from you readers and followers. By the way, if you read my blog and are on Facebook, please click on the “Networked Blogs” box to the right and sign in to your Facebook. It will update you when I post and help me with my website ratings. Thanks!!

Talk to you all again soon.

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    I am a Roman Catholic Priest for the Diocese of Colorado Springs. I am currently assigned to St. Dominic Catholic Church in Security, CO.


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