Author: St. Ann's Webmaster

You have likely heard the saying, “The Lord works in mysterious ways.” Well this Sunday’s First Reading definitely encompasses that. The Lord destroys His temple, uses pagans to punish Israel for their unfaithfulness, and then, using a different pagan king, He rebuilds the temple. We are now into week four of our series on discipleship. We started by affirming that we are all called to be disci...
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A priest was watching a photocopier work and he thought to himself, “This is what a parish is supposed to do - make other copies of Christ.” As we continue our journey of discipleship, we have so far covered two topics. The first was how we are called through our Baptism to be disciples of Christ. The second was a disciple is one who accepts the love of God, God’s amazing love. It is good to de...
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My mother said that if Isaac was a teenager it wouldn’t have been a sacrifice for Abraham to kill him. I am not sure if this was said in reference to me. As I promised last week, we are going to continue this series on discipleship. Last Sunday we talked about how we can know we are called to be disciples through our Baptism and we talked about using Lent to die to being a religious consumer an...
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As we begin this Lenten journey, I would like to use the different Sundays to explore some various aspects of Discipleship. What is a disciple? A disciple is a follower of Jesus who makes other followers of Jesus. This Sunday, we will look at the mystery of being chosen by God and how He shows we are chosen. Next Sunday, we will talk about God’s incomprehensibly, over the top love. The Third...
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Today we have the World Day of the Sick. Not that we celebrate sickness, most of us try to avoid sickness as health is preferable to most of us, however, is it actually a very important part of our faith, our understanding of sickness and the grace that comes from it. I don’t know if it is too popular now, but we always used to hear to, “offer it up,” - your sickness or pain. Offering up your pain...
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“Preach always; use words if necessary.” Some say that these are the words of St Francis and many will argue that St Francis never said this quote. They are right in that he never said that but he did do it. There is a story of St Francis in the book, “The Little Flowers of Saint Francis,” where he called one of his disciples and he said, “We are going to go preaching.” He took the disciple throug...
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There were three men in a little road side diner. One of the men looked up and noticed one of the customers looked familiar. He said to the waitress, “I know this sounds weird, but your customer over there looks like Jesus.” The waitress said, “It is Jesus.” The man said, “Well then, put his dinner on my bill please.” As the waitress walked by the next table the man there said, “I’m sorry for over...
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Have you ever had a penance in confession that you thought was unfair? Maybe not unfair but you might have thought it was a bit much. Or confessed a serious sin and got two Hail Mary’s and then next time you confessed to the same priest something you thought was venial and you got a Holy Hour or reading a whole book of the Bible. I heard someone tell me that for confessing for venial sins, they we...
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I was fascinated by the characters in this Sunday’s readings, Samuel and John the Baptist in particular. First, Samuel is sleeping in the temple and he hears the voice of the Lord. He does not know what was happening and so he goes to Eli. Samuel is so obedient that he goes back to bed. After the third time, he is told that it is the Lord and he should go back to bed and when it happens again resp...
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