Saint John Roman Catholic Church

Some people seem to think that the Catholic Church is just another multi-national corporation, Catholicism, Inc., with the Pope as CEO. Obviously, this view is a bit skewed, but is not totally off-base. The Church is in fact an international organization. That’s actually one of the meanings of the word “Catholic”– this church is no small sect limited to a particular ethnic enclave. Rather, it is “universal,” intended to reach and include people from all nations. 

That’s an important message of this Sunday’s first reading. Jesus mission was first and foremost to the children of Israel. But notice that he never restricted his ministry to Jews alone. In fact the person he pointed out as having more faith than just about anyone else he’d met was not a Jew, but a Roman, the centurion whose servant he healed.
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Gospel Summary 

This gospel passage is filled with beautiful statements about the ever popular subject of love. Jesus tells us that the Father loves him, and that he in turn loves us, and that we should love one another. Perhaps we have heard these sentiments expressed so often that we no longer realize how profound and dramatic they really are.
  

When Jesus says that the Father has loved him, he is correcting a very common concept of God. Many people at that time (and perhaps ever since) pictured God as someone very transcendent and therefore very distant from them. He was surely all-powerful but, like most powerful ones, he seemed to be cruel as well. Is God not in some way responsible for famine and natural disasters? Does he not at least permit the death of young parents and innocent children?
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Mary’s “yes” at the Annunciation achieves the central truths of the Incarnation, as it is here God becomes flesh and thus redeems the fallen children of Adam.  Sections §457-60 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church [CCC] provides four main consequences of Our Lady’s fiat.
 

The first is the reasoning from the forfeited goodness brought about by our disobedience: “The Word became flesh for us ‘in order to save us by reconciling us with God’”(1 Jn 4:10), who “loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins” (1 Jn 4:14); “the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world,” and he was revealed to take away sins. Then, quoting Gregory of Nyssa: “Sick, our nature demanded to be healed; fallen, to be raised up; dead, to rise again. We had lost the possession of the good; it was necessary for it to be given back to us” (§457).

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To run out of refreshments at a party or to not have enough hamburgers for a summer cookout might be an embarrassing moment for a modern-day host. However, to run short of wine at an ancient Jewish wedding feast would represent a social catastrophe that would severely damage a family’s reputation for years.
 

According to customs of the time, a first-century Jewish wedding would not have been a private family celebration, but a public event recognizing the union of the bride and groom as well as the joining of the two families. The celebration typically took place in the groom’s own home, which was made open to guests for several days and thus open to public scrutiny.

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Diverse commentators, pundits, and cultural critics seem to relish pointing out that Western societies and cultures, including the American, are rapidly sloughing off the remaining trammels and traces of their Christian heritage. These people proclaim that we are living in a “post-Christian” age, a term that fits the post-modern, post-colonial, post-structuralist mould. While Friedrich Nietzsche, they say, killed God, Michel Foucault killed man, so humanity is left facing the void. Life has no meaning and never did. We are carbon-based bipeds whose dioxide emissions are making the planet uninhabitable for all life forms with the possible exception of bacteria. People are the real blight. There is no objective, perennial truth, apart from nihilism. Such a conclusion, according to best-selling British atheist writers, is the logical result of wealth, intelligence, education, technology, liberal democracy, and common sense, the culmination of modernity.

Listers, One of the many essential tools to teaching our children about the glory and depth of our faith is the picture book. Children often have short attention spans, and their comprehension skills are still not as developed and refined as adults; however, that should not prevent us from sharing with them the truth, the glory, and the goodness of our Catholic tradition. The picture book is often an excellent tool to use to help remedy this difficult hurdle. When you really consider what makes good children’s literature you will notice a common thread among all the greats. Good children’s literature must be an intricate blend between the following: 1) a thoughtfully laid-out plot using plenty of descriptive language; 2) captivating relevant illustrations created with the intention of capturing children’s attention. When religious content is thrown into this intricate mix, it transforms story-time into an occasion of spiritual formation. But, how do you determine whether one Christian picture book is better than the other? The answer is very subjective, but there are some things I would suggest for you all to consider when selecting one:
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