Category Archives: Radio Reflections

Good morning, everyone. In my office, I have a little ceramic plaque, like a little plate, sitting on my windowsill. It was given to me by parishioners a few years ago. This plaque says, “Faith: As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

This is a quote from Joshua 24:15, where the Israelites were given the choice to serve either the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or the false gods of other nations. They were about to enter into the Promised Land, and this quote is from Joshua giving that choice and his decision to follow the Lord. The people of Israel responded, “Far be it for us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods.” Their choice was to follow the One True God over the false gods of other nations.

Israel wasn’t always faithful. They kept returning to these false gods, and had to be keep being called back to the One True God and being reminded of who the One True God is.

In our lives, we too are given the choice between the One True God, our Heavenly Father, and the false gods of the world. These aren’t the ancient gods that the Israelites were tempted by, such as the gods of the Middle East or Egypt or so on. Instead, the false gods we’re temped by are the false gods of worldly goods, human pride and self-centeredness. A false god is anything that becomes more important to us than serving God, and comes between us and God.

The fact is, our human temptation is to be worldly in spirit, focused on the things of the world. We tend to lose focus on what is truly important in our lives: our relationship with Our Lord Jesus Christ, and to serve others instead of ourselves. That desire to serve comes out of our relationship with Christ.

If we are worldly in spirit, we end up regulating our spiritual life to Sundays or certain situations, and not allowing our faith in Christ to influence every moment of our lives. To quote a phrase, we end up “Singing with the angels on Sunday, but living like the Devil the rest of the week”. Like the Israelites, we tend to wander away from the service of God, and follow the false gods of the world.

We need to hear the call of Our Lord to return to Him. Our Lord is waiting for us to return like the father in the parable of the prodigal son: The son who rejected his father and turned away from him. God is calling us when we fall into the trap of worldly things as this prodigal son did. He is waiting for us. We just need to turn back to Him.

(Post Reflection Music: Newsboys – The King is Coming)

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Good morning, everyone. We live in a world where so many voices claim to have the truth. There are religions that claim to have the truth. There are political commentators who claim to have the truth, especially at this time of elections they claim to be the “right answer” for everything. And so on.

All these voices that claim to have the truth, all they do is contract each other. Some of them even seem to go out of their way to argue with each other; look at politicians for example.

On top of all this, there is a whole different group of people who claim there is no truth outside of ourselves. It’s a moral relativism, where so long as I believe it’s the truth, it’s truth for me.

The problem with all these different competing truths is that we as Christians believe that there is a truth that we can find and follow. This truth is not some philosophy, nor some political platform; it’s not some thing. The Truth that we are called to follow is some body.

This Truth that we are called to follow is a person who became incarnated. This person is Our Lord Jesus Christ, who Himself tells us that He is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life”. We believe as Christians that God revealed the fullness of Truth through His Son. He revealed to us that there is a Truth, and that we are to follow it by following His Son.

People don’t want to hear that. They don’t want to hear that there is an objective truth, and that not every organization that claims to tell the truth is lying, but that there is someone who is the Truth. They don’t want to hear that because that means there are obligations they have to follow outside of themselves, that they cannot control what they think the truth is. However, there is a Truth that needs to lead and guide them.

This takes away from them the ability to justify how they live their lives. If there is a Truth outside of themselves, some of the things that they may be saying or doing are not true, good or right. Instead they want to follow relativism, the idea that there is no objective truth. The fact is that we live in a culture that says that.

Much of our culture is taking that which was revealed by Christ and saying it’s wrong. Instead, what he condemned is now being held as good, so long as it doesn’t hurt anyone and it’s mutually consented, and so on. Much of what was once viewed as a moral wrong is now seen as morally positive, or at least morally neutral. In fact, it seems the only morally wrong thing in the world today is either to be conservative or to judge someone else’s actions.

Of course, we know that there is a Truth, and that we are called to follow that Truth and to follow Him only.

(Post Reflection Music: Tree63 – You Only)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=imgarsW9shM

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Good morning, everyone. In the Gospel passage which we heard on Sunday at Catholic Mass – I know other churches use similar series of readings – Simon Peter was asked by Our Lord 3 times, “Do you love me?” That would be difficult enough, to hear Our Lord 3 times after His death and resurrection ask him do you love me.

The first time Our Lord asks this question he does it a little bit different. He says, “Do you love me more than these?” This isn’t just more than the other apostles, he’s asking Peter if he loves Him more than anything else in the world. Is there anything more important to Peter than Our Lord, or is Our Lord the most important thing in His life.

That’s a difficult question to be asked, but it’s a question we should  be asking ourselves. We are called by Our Lord to God above all things. And yet, I think we often put other things as more important, we love other things, more than we love God. We then end up making excuses why we aren’t following Our Lord as we should.

We find time for many things in our lives, those things we enjoy or desire. Do we ever find time for God in prayer and worship? We are truly called to love God above all things, putting God first in our priorities, and to put everything else 2nd to Him. We are called to look at the example of the apostles and the great saints who have gone before us, and gave up their families, their jobs, their possessions to follow Our Lord. Some even gave their very lives to follow Him.

We are called to do that because Our Lord in his 2 great commandments said that we are to “love God with our whole heart, soul and being. Second to that is to love our neighbor as ourselves. If we are not following God with that true love, we are not following that first commandment.

I think we realize deep down that there is a risk when we love God above all things because we end up doing and saying things at are not popular, and there will be pushback. Look at the prophets in the Old Testament and the Apostles after Our Lord ascended into heaven. They did and said things that caused them great greif. People became upset with them.

If we love God above all things, we will do and say things that will cause others to become upset with us. There will be difficulty in dealing with others. There will be problems that arise. People will not be happy with what we do and what we say.

But God will reward us if we love Him above all things. He will begin to give us the Grace in this life, the true joy that we desire, the true joy that comes from following Him, and cannot not be received from anything else but God. We will also receive eternal joy in the next life, which nothing else on earth can promise.

Above all, we should desire to love God because God wishes to spend eternity with us.

Like He asked Simon Peter, Jesus asks us “Do you love me more than these?” Of course, our answer should be as Simon Peter said, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.

(Post reflection music: Newsboys – Shine)

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