Flu Vaccine

I haven't had a flu vaccine shot for at least 10 years. My co-worker gets one every year. He got another one yesterday. Lets hope neither of us gets the flu this year.

Musings

I need to post on here to keep this blog somewhat alive. I'm thinking about buying some books today.

Time to speak up...

You are already likely aware of the direct attacks against conscience rights in health care. This is a serious tactic serving the culture of death in our country. Most recently, the new Administration has moved to rescind the Bush Administration's HHS regulation implementing long-standing (but also long-under-enforced!) federal conscience protection laws. As a result, OB/GYN's and other medical personnel will continue experiencing pressure to perform or refer for abortion or get out of the practice of medicine. If the regulation is rescinded, they will have no any formal recourse to register their complaints!

Pregnancy is not a disease, and abortion is not health care. Good doctors and nurses know this in their deepest core.

We must speak up now to protect their conscience rights! The public was given 30 days to express their urgent support for the regulation. The comment period ends next week on Thursday, April 9.

HHS is required to read and count every message they receive. Will you help us get the word out and mobilize pro-life America in defense of conscience rights?

new post

I think I need to add a new blog post just to keep this thing active. I would really like to start posting everyday again but things have been really busy at work.

It is almost the end of the first week of Lent and I don't really feel like I'm doing it right...again. I know we should be drawing closer to our Lord by fasting, Prayer and Almsgiving but I just don't think I'm really there with the Prayer and almsgiving part. I don't find the fasting very difficult. Its the other part that is so hard.

Russ

our new baby girl

Our new baby Caroline Rae was born on December 3rd. I'm just getting around to posting. It's been busy at home and at work. She's doing great. Kristi is doing great. She was 7lbs 4 oz and 20" long.

I'll post pictures later.

new post

Here's a new post to keep this blog active. Our #4 baby Caroline Rae will be born on Wednesday, December 3rd. Things are still about the same. I've got to fix the van this week. Transmission problem. Shift solenoid. I need to get started on selling my car so I can get a Van. I'm getting a good bit of overtime at work which we definitely need.

Kids are growing up fine.

Russ

testy testy testy

test

need to update this...

I need to keep this thing active, so here's a new blog entry.

Blog to read - notesfromstillsong

Gospel reading for June 4th

Gospel
Mk 12:18-27

Some Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection,
came to Jesus and put this question to him, saying,
“Teacher, Moses wrote for us,
If someone’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no child,
his brother must take the wife
and raise up descendants for his brother.
Now there were seven brothers.
The first married a woman and died, leaving no descendants.
So the second brother married her and died, leaving no descendants,
and the third likewise.
And the seven left no descendants.
Last of all the woman also died.
At the resurrection when they arise whose wife will she be?
For all seven had been married to her.”
Jesus said to them, “Are you not misled
because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God?
When they rise from the dead,
they neither marry nor are given in marriage,
but they are like the angels in heaven.
As for the dead being raised,
have you not read in the Book of Moses,
in the passage about the bush, how God told him,
I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac,
and the God of Jacob?
He is not God of the dead but of the living.
You are greatly misled.”

Today's Gospel reading

Gospel
Jn 15:9-17

Jesus said to his disciples:
“As the Father loves me, so I also love you.
Remain in my love.
If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love,
just as I have kept my Father’s commandments
and remain in his love.

“I have told you this so that my joy might be in you
and your joy might be complete.
This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.
No one has greater love than this,
to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
You are my friends if you do what I command you.
I no longer call you slaves,
because a slave does not know what his master is doing.
I have called you friends,
because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.
It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you
and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain,
so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you.
This I command you: love one another.”

Comments:

Wow! Jesus makes it pretty simple doesn't he? Jesus Loves us. Keep His commandments. His commandment is to "Love one another."

Why do we make life so complicated?

Wearing my Catholicism on my sleeve...

I'm trying to think of ways to be a "light unto the nations" and be cool at the same time. Wow! Talk about an impossibility. I'm thinking of questions like - how does one be a Catholic in public and in the workplace and not wear his Catholicism on his sleeve? Most people who do that are just annoying. How do I make Catholic Christianity appealing? Should I or would I wear a Catholic t-shirt? I don't like t-shirts that advertise. Would I put a little St. Isidore statue on the desk at work? No. Or even have a Roman Catholic coffee mug? I would do that. Most people, me included, are not impressed by little trinkets displaying a persons chosen faith. But I guess they could be used as a conversation starter. My problem is that in the process of trying to be loving, friendly, personable and full of the Holy Spirit I return to being a compromising, fleshly, worldly person who is just like every other "backsliden" Christian.

My inner voice or maybe it's my friendly guardian angel who I hardly ever talk to says - being an authentic Catholic Christian requires being sincere, personable and loving. Don't be afraid to express your love to people. Be friendly to people. They will know you are my disciples by your love for each other. But I say to myself - Baptist do that - I need conversation starters. These Baptist around here need to know that Catholics do exist and are not some lost, idol worshiping infidels.

Jesus or Holy Spirit or Angel says - Just shut up and love God and people.

St. Francis De Sales - Ora pro nobis

Russ

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Reading for today.

Reading 1
Acts 4:13-21

Observing the boldness of Peter and John
and perceiving them to be uneducated, ordinary men,
the leaders, elders, and scribes were amazed,
and they recognized them as the companions of Jesus
. Then when they saw the man who had been cured standing there with them,
they could say nothing in reply.
So they ordered them to leave the Sanhedrin,
and conferred with one another, saying,
“What are we to do with these men?
Everyone living in Jerusalem knows that a remarkable sign
was done through them, and we cannot deny it.
But so that it may not be spread any further among the people,
let us give them a stern warning
never again to speak to anyone in this name.”

So they called them back
and ordered them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus.
Peter and John, however, said to them in reply,
“Whether it is right in the sight of God
for us to obey you rather than God, you be the judges.
It is impossible for us not to speak about what we have seen and heard.”
After threatening them further,
they released them,
finding no way to punish them,
on account of the people who were all praising God
for what had happened.

Responsorial Psalm
118:1 and 14-15ab, 16-18, 19-21

R. (21a) I will give thanks to you, for you have answered me.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good,
for his mercy endures forever.
My strength and my courage is the LORD,
and he has been my savior.
The joyful shout of victory
in the tents of the just.
R. I will give thanks to you, for you have answered me.
or:
R. Alleluia.
“The right hand of the LORD is exalted;
the right hand of the LORD has struck with power.”
I shall not die, but live,
and declare the works of the LORD.
Though the LORD has indeed chastised me,
yet he has not delivered me to death.
R. I will give thanks to you, for you have answered me.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Open to me the gates of justice;
I will enter them and give thanks to the LORD.
This is the gate of the LORD;
the just shall enter it.
I will give thanks to you, for you have answered me
and have been my savior.
R. I will give thanks to you, for you have answered me.
or:
R. Alleluia.

Gospel
Mk 16:9-15

When Jesus had risen, early on the first day of the week,
he appeared first to Mary Magdalene,
out of whom he had driven seven demons.
She went and told his companions who were mourning and weeping.
When they heard that he was alive
and had been seen by her, they did not believe.

After this he appeared in another form
to two of them walking along on their way to the country.
They returned and told the others;
but they did not believe them either.

But later, as the Eleven were at table, he appeared to them
and rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart
because they had not believed those
who saw him after he had been raised.
He said to them, “Go into the whole world
and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.”

My Thoughts

Jesus appears! Even when we doubt. He appears. How can this be? My mind does not really grasp this. This is a great mystery to meditate on. Jesus appears to Mary and then the two disciples on the road and then the Apostles when they were at table. I'm sure the reason they were at table was because Jesus said "do this in remembrance of Me". In other place it says they recognized Him in "the breaking of the bread". To most protestant minds this just means they were having a meal. To the Catholic this surely was the Eucharist. Why else would the scripture say Jesus appeared to them when they were "breaking the bread" after He had just instituted the Lord's Supper before he was crucified?

Sometimes I wonder, why doesn't Jesus visibly appear more often in our world? In our normal everyday life we don't visibly see Jesus. But we are called to see Him in others. He says "as you do it to least of these...you do it to me". So we are to see Him in others. But in another place Jesus says to Thomas "blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed". So we are blessed if we believe Him without seeing him as Thomas did. My kids sometimes wonder why they can't see Jesus. James Patrick thinks he lives in the sky. I try to tell him that Jesus is in the room with us right now and he usually says "But I can't see him". How do we see Jesus today? I believe the scriptures and the example of others throughout history teaches that in order to see Him I must desire Him more than life. I must die to myself. We must love Him and others as He commanded. We must be consumed by His Love.

And even if I never experience a personal appearance of Jesus in the natural order, as was the case with Mother Teresa and so many other saints, I am still blessed because of the witness of the Holy Spirit in my inmost being. O sure Jesus can break through the natural order at any time and appear to us, as He did with the disciples, and He has does this on many occasions , but He chooses to not do this most of the time.

I'm sure to the atheist and agnostic this is probably a child's imaginary mind game but to the Christian it just reaffirms the words of Jesus. "unless you repent and become like children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven".

We should love as he commanded us to love and call to mind His words, "as you have done unto the least of these...you have done it to me". This is the only way to true happiness in this world.

I believe that He will reveal himself to us when we are completely at the end of ourselves. When we trust Him more than our own eyes. Surely his followers were at their end. The sadness of what they had just witnessed was just too much.

At every Catholic church there is a tabernacle and inside the tabernacle and sometimes displayed on the Monstrance is the host. What looks to us like bread is actually Jesus Christ. My former protestant mind thinks. Thats impossible. Thats childish. Thats ridiculous. Why should I believe that? But the Kingdom of God is a very mysterious place. Its always been a paradox. A combination of flesh and Spirit. How do I transcend the natural and see the spiritual? How do I not deny the natural while I enter the spiritual realm? I can't wrap my mind around this.

God has put us in a place where we have the evidence of Him in our hearts and lives. We have the evidence in others. We have the evidence in our experience of this world. We have the evidence in our struggles with our flesh. We have evidence in our chastisements that He send us. We have evidence in the Church he has established. We have evidence in all of His Creation. All Creation cries out - God Loves Us.

An honest person who reads the scriptures must see this. The scriptures are full of the impossible. Why choose to believe only some of the impossibilities?

Another thought:

The scripture says that Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene first. She is the woman who was freed of 7 demons. I'm pretty sure that 7 demons means that she was under complete control of demons because the number 7 is used in scripture over and over to mean full or complete. Surely this was a temptation for the Apostles. Why would their Master appear first to her? A former demon possessed woman? After all they were the chosen leaders of His Church. And the women in that day were considered 2nd class citizens. But after the women at the well in Samaria and the attempted stoning of the woman caught in adultery they should have realized that Jesus wasn't tied to their cultural prejudices. Amazing how Jesus flips our understanding of the world. He humbles us. He is making things right that we have made so wrong.

The Daily Eudemon

I just found this blog - The Daily Eudemon - I think I'll start checking this blog more often. I like this guys approach to things. Example:

Fr. de Souza cogently condemns video games:

Video games take what is most precious — time and thought. And they are making kids fat.

Video games are like a black hole into which time disappears. Students today often confess to wasting a couple of hours a day on them. Corporate Canada likely loses whole weeks of productive work to those who are playing games at work. Video games have some kind of addictive allure that means any number of hours is not enough. It is always possible to play again — to rise to that “next level” which somehow acquires near-mystical importance. They are the crack cocaine of the electronic world.

My response: He’s right, kinda. But I’d call video games the Red Bull and Vodka of the video world. The stuff is addicting, in the sense that it gets kids hooked on the dopamine ups and downs and the low-impact thrill of a video world. But lots of things are like that: golf, bowling, sex, any absorbing hobby. The answer to any such threat is moderation, not abstinence. I think video games pose a greater risk than bowling, but I think it’s a difference of degree, not kind.

I think it’s an important distinction. De Souza wasn’t allowed access to video games at all. When he got to college, he got hooked on Tetris. My parents allowed me to play video games while growing up, all the while warning me against excessive play time and threatening to police my use if I couldn’t police it myself. When I went to college, I got hooked on . . . nothing (beer excepted).

This is important. If you over-state the risk (calling it “crack cocaine”), kids will stay away while living in the shelter of their parents’ home, but when they go to college and see friends playing video games without ending up on the Bowery, they’ll try it. Once they try it and discover that their world isn’t coming to an end after all, they’ll conclude everything they heard before wasn’t true . . . and they’ll charge in and play to excess. That’s when they become addicts.

Finally, the total abstinence approach gives video games an allure that they don’t deserve. Video games are stupid (often fun, but at bottom, stupid). They don’t deserve as much attention as effective prohibition requires, and by enforcing prohibition, you make the chance of their abuse much higher. They say drunks come from two types of households: the soused and the teetotaling. I suspect a similar thing can be said about the video game obsessed. They come from two types of households: The household that keeps a TV on all the time and never questions whether the screen media could be harmful (the soused) and the puritan-like household that doesn’t allow screens.

Moderation in all things, except the intrinsically evil and the holy. Any other approach will lead to problems.

Quote of the day...

“It is easier to perceive error than to find truth, for the former lies on the surface and is easily seen, while the latter lies in the depth, where few are willing to search for it.”

poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

O Love that wilt not let me go

O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.

O light that followest all my way,
I yield my flickering torch to thee;
My heart restores its borrowed ray,
That in thy sunshine’s blaze its day
May brighter, fairer be.

O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.

O Cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from thee;
I lay in dust life’s glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be.

Another Find your Candidate test...

http://www.vajoe.com/candidate_results.php

My top guy was Huckabee

Today's Gospel

Gospel
Jn 3:13-17

Jesus said to Nicodemus:
“No one has gone up to heaven
except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man.
And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert,
so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him might not perish
but might have eternal life.
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world,
but that the world might be saved through him.

The first thing that caught my eye in this reading was Jesus statement that "No one has gone up to heaven except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man". Why would He say that if there are examples in scripture of people being taken to heaven? eg Moses, Elijah, possibly Enoch? Haydock's commentary says that Jesus was showing that He is Devine - He descended from heaven..no one else has done that.

Oh well I just read Saint Augustine's comments on this scripture and now I have been awed by his meditation on this passage.

As Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life.

My first thoughts about this passage are the physical aspect of this passage. When Israel was in the desert complaining to Moses about their suffering, God sent snakes to punish the people. God told Moses to make a snake and put it on a pole and the people will be healed when they look at the snake on the pole.

This was one of the passages that I've seen Catholics point to when defending the crucifix. Not very deeply but I think I remember someone pointing to this scripture and saying "this sound a lot like a crucifix".

The whole idea of looking at a man holding a pole with a bronze snake mounted on the top to heal you from a snake bite seems kind of ridiculous to a rational thinking person. But these are the kind of story's that are littered through out the Bible. This is the history of God's dealings with man that we trust in by faith. It seems very far fetched to a 21st century man living in the USA but this is what comes with being a Christian. Some Christians mock other Christians for believing in wild far fetched ideas about all kinds of things but maybe they are forgetting some of these story's that are all scattered throughout the Bible.

Now on to my exegeses of this passage. As we look to Christ on the Cross and trust in God's mercy so to did the Israelites look to God's mercy when they repented of their sin and looked to Moses holding the bronze serpent mounted on the pole. This was a foreshadowing of the the crucification of Christ on the cross. Amazing how God takes the failing of the people to foreshadow an event that is yet to occur.

Gospel for Saturday April 28th

Saturday of the Third Week of Easter Psalm: Saturday 15

Reading 1 Responsorial Psalm Gospel

Reading 1
Acts 9:31-42

The Church throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria
was at peace.
She was being built up and walked in the fear of the Lord,
and with the consolation of the Holy Spirit she grew in numbers.

As Peter was passing through every region,
he went down to the holy ones living in Lydda.
There he found a man named Aeneas,
who had been confined to bed for eight years, for he was paralyzed.
Peter said to him,
“Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you. Get up and make your bed.”
He got up at once.
And all the inhabitants of Lydda and Sharon saw him,
and they turned to the Lord.

Now in Joppa there was a disciple named Tabitha
(which translated is Dorcas).
She was completely occupied with good deeds and almsgiving.
Now during those days she fell sick and died,
so after washing her, they laid her out in a room upstairs.
Since Lydda was near Joppa,
the disciples, hearing that Peter was there,
sent two men to him with the request,
“Please come to us without delay.”
So Peter got up and went with them.
When he arrived, they took him to the room upstairs
where all the widows came to him weeping
and showing him the tunics and cloaks
that Dorcas had made while she was with them.
Peter sent them all out and knelt down and prayed.
Then he turned to her body and said, “Tabitha, rise up.”
She opened her eyes, saw Peter, and sat up.
He gave her his hand and raised her up,
and when he had called the holy ones and the widows,
he presented her alive.
This became known all over Joppa,
and many came to believe in the Lord.

Responsorial Psalm
Ps 116:12-13, 14-15, 16-17

R. (12) How shall I make a return to the Lord for all the good he has done for me?
or:
R. Alleluia.
How shall I make a return to the LORD
for all the good he has done for me?
The cup of salvation I will take up,
and I will call upon the name of the LORD
R. How shall I make a return to the Lord for all the good he has done for me?
or:
R. Alleluia.
My vows to the LORD I will pay
in the presence of all his people.
Precious in the eyes of the LORD
is the death of his faithful ones.
R. How shall I make a return to the Lord for all the good he has done for me?
or:
R. Alleluia.
O LORD, I am your servant;
I am your servant, the son of your handmaid;
you have loosed my bonds.
To you will I offer sacrifice of thanksgiving,
and I will call upon the name of the LORD.
R. How shall I make a return to the Lord for all the good he has done for me?
or:
R. Alleluia.

Gospel
Jn 6:60-69

Many of the disciples of Jesus who were listening said,
“This saying is hard; who can accept it?”
Since Jesus knew that his disciples were murmuring about this,
he said to them, “Does this shock you?
What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?
It is the Spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail.
The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life.
But there are some of you who do not believe.”
Jesus knew from the beginning the ones who would not believe
and the one who would betray him.
And he said, “For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me
unless it is granted him by my Father.”

As a result of this,
many of his disciples returned to their former way of life
and no longer walked with him.
Jesus then said to the Twelve, “Do you also want to leave?”
Simon Peter answered him, “Master, to whom shall we go?
You have the words of eternal life.
We have come to believe
and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”