Apparently, Planned Parenthood is not happy with the Montana Board of Pharmacy. Planned Parenthood of Montana has petitioned the board to change their rules regarding religious objections to birth control. Please keep praying for those pharmacists who are following their consciences, not only in Montana, but throughout the United States.
With my impending ordination, I’ve had several family members ask me what they should get me as a gift. In response, basically because I’m not exactly sure myself, I’ve created a wishlist at Amazon.com that I can email to family and friends. I’ve also added an icon to the side bar of the blog which will allow anyone who would like to peruse my wishlist to do so with little or no trouble. I’ll probably create some other wishlists at other merchants, but Amazon was the first site that came to mind when discussing this with my parents.
For those who have “friended” me on Facebook, you may have seen the article in the Billings Gazette regarding the Catholic pharmacist in small-town Montana who no longer dispenses birth control. He was reported to the Montana Board of Pharmacy, which has dropped all charges against him. Please keep Mr. Lane and his family in your prayers. He has taken a very courageous stance for life, and will be attacked further.
In our culture today, many are obsessed with postponing or even eliminating mortality. Movie stars and politicians spend thousands, even millions, annually on plastic surgery and make-up to keep themselves looking like they’re 20 years old. Scientists are actively looking for the “aging” gene, trying to find that element in our DNA which causes us to grow old and eventually die. Some more eccentric people with far more money than common sense are even having themselves cryogenically frozen at the moment of death so that they can be thawed out and resurrected at a future date. Great quantities of time and money are spent in the search to find the technological equivalent to Jesus’ miracle in today’s Gospel.
While we are concerned about our physical deaths, our culture is ignoring the far more serious death of sin. As physical illnesses can bring about the death of our bodies, sin can bring the spiritual death that comes when we allow our sins to cut ourselves off from God. Through our sins, we turn from God and push away from him. Much like one might stand outside on a sunny day with the sun on our backs and see our shadow before us, sin causes us to turn away from the light of Christ and be drawn into the darkness that is in the world.
Like the stench from Lazarus’ grave, this darkness of sin pervades our world today. Sins that were once avoided are now tolerated, even encouraged. Virtues, such as chastity and religious observance, are mocked and derided. Success is viewed as the achievement of wealth and power. Professional sports players, big-screen actors, and other public personalities are idolized, while those who live humbly and morally upright lives are denigrated and ridiculed. In many ways, the only true sin in the eyes of the world is daring to believe that there truly is right and wrong, virtue and vice.
The deeper that we are drawn into the world by sin, the tighter that sin ties us up. Like Lazarus in the tomb, sin binds our hands and feet, keeping us from the grace that God promises us. When we willingly choose a gravely immoral action that we know to be immoral, we commit a mortal sin, which can even cut ourselves off completely from God, ensnaring us from head to toe with sin. To die in this state would cut us off from God for all eternity, which is the definition of what it means to be condemned to Hell.
There is a bright side, however. We can get the bindings of sin removed. We can turn back to God and enjoy his grace through the Sacrament of Reconciliation. When we celebrate this powerful and beautiful sacrament, we admit our sins to God and ask for his forgiveness. Through the words of the priest, we hear that God gives us his forgiveness and exhorts us to “Go, and sin no more.” Our bindings are removed, we come out of the tomb of death and enter into glorious light of life. Our souls bask in the glory of God.
I will be the first to admit that confession of sins is painful. It’s difficult to closely examine how sin has affected us and to admit our failings. It’s also very difficult to go to another human being and lay bare our souls, especially if we know the priest well. The joy that comes from being truly in union with God more than makes up for the momentary pain of confessing our sins.
Through our sins, we are bound to death, but through God’s mercy and forgiveness, we are released to life.
With all the blogs, some good, many not-so-good, why do I feel it necessary to inflict another blog on the world? My hope is that this blog will have a three-fold purpose. First, it will allow me to post my homilies and receive feedback on how good or bad the homily is, what works, what doesn’t, etc. Second, and more importantly, I hope that it can be used in some small way to help spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the world. Finally, I hope to just have some fun with it, linking to items and articles that I find interesting, cool, or just plain old strange. In other words, I hope it’ll be quite a mix of posts.
The title of the blog comes from the New Vulgate translation of Psalm 150. I always look forward to praying this psalm within the four week psalter of the Liturgy of the Hours, so I have adopted this last line as my personal motto.
