My Ponderings - The Roman Collar

It's the middle of Advent

12/13/2014

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.

I am back...as a Priest!

10/20/2014

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.

MOSQUITO TRAP

6/6/2013

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.

New Assignment

6/5/2013

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!

Bishop + Criminal = 29 Inches of Razor

4/25/2013

Here is a fun little article I came across from Fox News. I never considered Mormon Bishop and Ninja in the same context before. I have bolded the really fun parts. Enjoy.

MILLCREEK, Utah – An LDS bishop with a samurai sword was one of several neighbors who came to a woman’s aide after a man assaulted her and tried to get into her home on Tuesday morning.

Lt. Justin Hoyal, Unified Police Department, said they responded to the incident shortly after 7 a.m. near 2165 East Claybourne Ave.

Hoyal said 37-year-old Grant Eggertsen assaulted a 35-year-old female victim and tried to get inside her home as she was leaving. Hoyal said the two had a professional relationship in the past, and when that deteriorated the victim had obtained a stalking injunction against Eggertsen.

The victim screamed and ran from the home. Eggertsen gave chase, and a physical altercation took place. The victim tried to pepper spray Eggertsen, but that was not effective.

Several neighbors heard the noise and came outside and confronted Eggertsen. One of those neighbors was Kent Hendrix, who is a bishop with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a black belt in karate.

Hendrix says his teenage son alerted him to the incident going on outside.

“He comes running in pounding on my door saying, ‘Dad, someone’s being mugged in front of our house.’ So I threw my clothes on, grabbed my sword and out I came,” Hendrix said.

Hendrix came outside with a samurai sword, and he wielded the weapon while he and other neighbors confronted and then chased Eggertsen away. Eggertsen ran to his car and drove off.

“As he was coming through the fence, this is where I drew down on him and told him to get down on the ground,” Hendrix said. ”His eyes just got huge and he was taken aback that he was staring down 29 inches of razor.”

Hendrix has studied martial arts for decades and owns his own academy. He says he’s thrilled to use his training for good.

“I’ve never had to use my martial arts until today, in anger, happy things worked out well,” he said.

Eggertsen turned himself in within an hour of the incident. He was charged with violation of a stalking injunction, trespassing, attempted burglary and robbery.

“There were several neighbors that came out to this victim’s aide, one of which was carrying a sword,” Hoyal said. “And ultimately, as a result of the efforts of these neighbors, hopefully caused this suspect to give up the attack on this victim and take off running.”

The victim had minor injuries from the assault, and she refused medical treatment at the scene of the incident.

Pope Francis

3/13/2013

Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum. Habemus Papam.  Eminentissimum ac Reverendissimum Dominum. Dominum Georgium Marium  Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae Cardinalem Bergoglio  Qui nomen sibi imposuit Franciscum.
Viva il Papa

And with those words, the world received the news of its new Pope Francis. Jorge Mario Bergoglio was chosen by the College of Cardinals to lead the Catholic Church. The 76 year-old Jesuit was the archbishop of Buenos Aires and that gives us a number of firsts. He is the first Jesuit ever to become pope, the first pope from the Americas (this hemisphere, Latin America, Argentina, etc) and the first pope to take the name Francis after St. Francis of Assisi. What a wonderful start! What does this all mean? I would like to refer to a very respected Vatican observer, Rocco Palmo, who says this on his blog:

By choosing the name of the founder of his community's traditional rivals, the 266th Roman pontiff – the first from the American continent, home to more than half of the 1.2 billion-member church – has signaled three things: his desire to be a force of unity in a polarized fold, a heart for the poor, and his intent to "repair God's house, which has fallen into ruin"... that is, to rebuild the church.

I am sure that the papers will be filled with his information and mis-information over the next few days. Let us remember the new pope in our prayers.

O God, who in your providential design willed that your Church be built upon blessed Peter, whom you set over the other apostles, look with favor, we pray, on Francis, our Pope, and grant that he, whom you have made Peter’s successor, may be for your people a visible source and foundation of unity in faith and of communion.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.
Amen.

Pope Benedict XVI Sets Aside the Crown of Peter

2/11/2013

Yes, It's true. Pope Benedict XVI, the 266th successor to the throne of Peter has set aside the Throne and announced his resignation. Here is the full text of his speech.

"I have convoked you to this Consistory, not only for the three canonizations, but also to communicate to you a decision of great importance for the life of the Church. After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry. I am well aware that this ministry, due to its essential spiritual nature, must be carried out not only with words and deeds, but no less with prayer and suffering. However, in today?s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the barque of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfil the ministry entrusted to me. For this reason, and well aware of the seriousness of this act, with full freedom I declare that I renounce the ministry of Bishop of Rome, Successor of Saint Peter, entrusted to me by the Cardinals on 19 April 2005, in such a way, that as from 28 February 2013, at 20:00 hours, the See of Rome, the See of Saint Peter, will be vacant and a Conclave to elect the new Supreme Pontiff will have to be convoked by those whose competence it is."

"Dear Brothers, I thank you most sincerely for all the love and work with which you have supported me in my ministry and I ask pardon for all my defects. And now, let us entrust the Holy Church to the care of Our Supreme Pastor, Our Lord Jesus Christ, and implore his holy Mother Mary, so that she may assist the Cardinal Fathers with her maternal solicitude, in electing a new Supreme Pontiff. With regard to myself, I wish to also devotedly serve the Holy Church of God in the future through a life dedicated to prayer."

This is a momentous day. Let us all keep the Roman Pontiff and Holy Mother Church in our prayers.

55 MILLION

1/25/2013

At some point in the past year, the United States experienced its 55 millionth legal abortion... That's 55 million creative minds, 55 million people that could be working, 55 million that could be contributing to society. To put the total of 55 million in perspective, the combined number of military deaths in all of America's wars –- from the Revolutionary War to the second Iraq war –- is 1.2 million. The loss is staggering.

Time Magazine - Have You Seen It?

1/3/2013

I am not a big fan of Time magazine as it seems to me to be just as liberal as most of the rest of the mainstream media. Yet today they surprised us with this cover. Have you seen it?

They also ran a very good article on pro life. Below is the article and you can also view it in Time's magazine or on their website here.

Pro-Life and Feminism Aren’t Mutually Exclusive

From its early beginnings, feminism was a young women’s movement. Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alice Paul, Charlotte Lozier and so many others began their suffragist work in their 20s. These women — the original feminists — understood that the rights of women cannot be built on the broken backs of unborn children. Anthony called abortion “child murder.” Paul, author of the original 1923 Equal Rights Amendment, said that “abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women.”

So the pro-life movement hasn’t changed the meaning of feminism, as has been suggested. It was the neo-feminists of the 1960s and ’70s who asked women to prize abortion as the pathway to equality.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, along with a group of mostly Democratic women, started the Susan B. Anthony List in 1992, the so-called Year of the Woman, when numerous pro-choice women were elected to Congress. Dannenfelser, then in her mid-20s, saw a need to support more pro-life women running for elected office. Twenty years since the organization’s founding, we now have two pro-life women in the Senate, 17 in the House, four in governorships and hundreds more in state legislatures.

Pro-life feminism has captivated a new generation of young women who reject the illusion that to be pro-woman is to be pro-choice. Gallup polling showed that among 18-to-29-year-olds, there was a 5% increase in those labeling themselves “pro-life” between 2007–08 and 2009–10. The past few years have seen the emergence of young leaders like Kristan Hawkins of Students for Life of America, who is responsible for organizing more than 675 pro-life groups on college campuses across the nation, and Lila Rose of Live Action, whose undercover video work has forced the abortion industry to confront and amend practices it cannot defend, as well as dozens of other future leaders who have assisted our organization as staff members and interns. During the past two summers we’ve had young female leaders join the SBA List from Stanford, Georgetown, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the University of California, Berkeley. These passionate defenders of women and unborn children return to their campuses ready to lead pro-life groups and educate their classmates on the tragedy of abortion.

Not only does this young generation of pro-life women shun the notion that abortion somehow liberates women; it views abortion as the civil- and human-rights cause of our day. Abortion is an injustice that permeates our society. Forty years after Roe v. Wade, we realize that a third of our peers are not here to share our progress and our hopes. It is our loss as well as theirs.

In his letter from a Birmingham, Ala., jail, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” It is in this same spirit of King and the original feminists that young pro-life women are rising up in increasing numbers to say abortion is a radical injustice that affects us all and must end. Achieving this will require more efforts to extend our understanding of the equal rights of the disabled unborn, prevent rape and make this crime against women a thing of the past, expand adoption and make the benefits of modern prenatal care and specialties like fetal surgery more available, so that even younger and sicker children can be spared an early death.

Our fight transcends elections and legislative battles because our fight is in our hearts. This is why, 40 years after Roe, our movement is still growing. We won’t give up; we can’t give up. Our fight is for life.

Time for a Resolution?

12/31/2012

So this time every year many people make New Year’s resolutions. I haven’t done this in a number of years because it seems that no matter how hard I try they only last for a few months and then are forgotten. But I think this year I may try again. This is going to be a wonderful year as I look forward to ordination the diaconate in May. When I returned to Kenrick, we should be living in the new building and that will certainly be nice also.

So I think I’ll try again this year. Maybe make a resolution to once again try to post more often on my blog. This is been a work in progress for the last five years and I never seem to get the postings done on a regular basis. But maybe with a resolution I should try again. It is my hope that my website will become a permanent part of my ministry and since I look forward to ordination and beginning my ministry in less than five months now might be a good time to really put some effort into my blog as well.

A few months ago on my blog I noted that I was going to make some changes to my website including a page for videos and adding items to my ordination pages. Then along came the end of the semester, finals, papers and of course packing for the move back to Kenrick. And so nothing happened. I’ve enjoyed the last couple of weeks on my Christmas vacation kind of resting and recuperating and I hope to spend the time remaining between now and my return to Kenrick working on my webpage. I don’t know how successful I’ll be, but here I go again. Keep me in your prayers and stay tuned for more to come.

So what are your New Year’s resolutions?

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