Redskins picked up defensive end Jason Hatcher from the Cowboys. Doc Walker, the St. Thomas Aquinas of NFC-East theology, determined that this required a baptism.
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Oscar Wilde got a lot of comic mileage out of re-christenings in The Importance of Being Earnest. I don’t think Doc intends anything sacrilegious. Football may not involve divine grace, but it does require commitment.
We say, of course, that every day belongs to Jesus.
Today, December 6, however, actually does belong to Santa Claus.
Very few holiday shoppers realize that Santa Claus risked his life to defend the Catholic faith in the divinity of Jesus Christ.
The stylish and mellifluous Arius of Alexandria had gained worldwide fame for his brilliant compromise between the Christian religion and the sophisticated Greek and Roman people. Jesus should be esteemed as an excellent man, worthy of the highest admiration, but…
Santa Claus attended the first-ever world-wide council of bishops, held in Nicaea, in Asia Minor, now Turkey. As we well know, the Council declared that Jesus is not just extremely cool and worth going shopping in honor of, He is also consubstantial with the Father. He is God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made.
What’s even worse than falling off the fiscal cliff? Having a spiritual house built on sand. Winds blow. Rains fall. Floods come.
In his day, Arius had as much cache as Bono and Bill O’Reilly put together. There were a lot more Arian churches than Catholic churches back in those days.
But it wasn’t true. Arius’ teaching was less than true. Christ is no angel-man. Christ is the God-man. Santa Claus went to the mat for that precise truth. Santa Claus built his spiritual house in the north pole on the rock of the true faith.
Because, as every child knows, “North Pole” is a code-phrase for: Heaven.
Happy feast day, Santa!
Now, we know you won’t mind, Santa, that we will spend the next nineteen days focusing exclusively on Jesus Christ, since that is what you spent every day of your earthly life doing.
PS. The Baltimore Ravens and the Washington Redskins face-off in the regular season every four years.
Four years ago, the hallowed tradition of St.-Nicholas-Day(ish) contests for Beltway bragging rights began. That was not a happy afternnon, December 7, 2008. It was painful.
Will this Sunday afternoon prove otherwise? Will the RGIIIeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!! train keep rolling? Santa could make us very happy this year, with one little W at FedEx. Everything is riding on it, Santa!
The Lord proclaims to the people: “I am compassionate.”
How compassionate?
…In five weeks, we will start working the famous pew-cards with the revised translation of our Mass prayers. When we do, we will discover some different words in our beloved Nicene Creed.
The first question is: Why do we recite the Creed at Mass? Any thoughts?
Right. Because this is what we believe about God Almighty. We Catholics believe specific things.
Whenever I encounter someone who says something like “Who needs organized religion?” or “Don’t we all pray to the same god anyway?” or “I’m not religious; I’m spiritual,” I experience two simultaneous reactions.
1. Thank God, I intend first and foremost to sympathize, to extend a friendly hand, to put the best possible interpretation on the other person’s point of view. After all, God indeed does transcend all the words we use to focus our minds on Him.
2. Meanwhile, though, whenever I hear such vague shibboleths about religion, I cannot help but think to myself: “Gosh. Do you have a thought in your head? How can you be satisfied with nonsensical flim-flam about God? Shouldn’t you take yourself a little more seriously?”
For years, I have been telling my brother priests: The best protection against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune is…
…a fiddleback chasuble. Obviously, our Holy Father agrees…
Bad: Duke winning the national championship.
Good: Jason Campbell replaced by Donovan McNabb…
…According to the Old Covenant, a levite was to blow a trumpet from the top of the Temple wall to call the people to a holy feast.
The trumpet of the New Covenant is the sermon of St. Peter, also delivered at the Temple wall:
God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. –Acts 2:36
In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as expiation for our sins. (I John 4:10)
If you want to catch a nice fish, you get up early, take your reel, bait the hook, and cast the line.
God provides: The fish, the water, the earth, the sky, the light, the motion of the water, the air you’re breathing, the motion of the earth on its axis, the nutritional value of the fish, the proper functioning of all your muscles, organs, and senses, etc., etc.
If you want to get to heaven, God provides: Heaven, earth, the atoning sacrifice, all the necessary graces, everyone He sends to help you on the way, all necessary teaching and sustenance, and, of course, yourself.
All we have to do is: get up, give thanks, and stand in the right place.
…Are you kidding me? The defending national champs got beat by the College of Charleston? Sweet!
…Will we miss Jim Zorn? No.
He did, in fact, follow our advice. But he followed it too much.
Everything unraveled under him because he instilled no fear. Without fear, there is no discipline. And to instill fear in those under your authority, you have to be a lot more in touch with reality than Coach Z ever was.
Cinderella never even got a glass slipper yesterday. She couldn’t make her lay-ups. And Greg Monroe kept getting the rebound. Hoyas 7-0!!!!!
…The Holy Father gave a beautiful talk yesterday at the Spanish steps about the Blessed Virgin Mary. Please read.
…Now the Redskins are cutting Shaun Suisham for missing ONE field-goal. He was basically the whole offense for the first half of the season. He is the most reliable kicker the Deadskins have ever had. Not fair, not fair…
Don’t forget to recite the Act of Dedication to Christ the King today. Click here.
…
Behold, He is coming amid the clouds, and every eye will see Him. (Revelation 1:7)
While we were in Israel, my fellow pilgrims and I saw many of the places and things referred to in the Bible. We saw the hometown of Jesus Christ, and the place where He was born. We saw the Sea of Galilee. We saw the Jordan River. We saw the desert where Christ was tempted by the devil. We saw the pathway on which He rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. We saw the Mount of Olives, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Temple Mount and Mount Calvary. We saw the tomb where Christ’s body lay.
I have been on a nice, long hot-air balloon ride. Just got back, and I found my computer under a basket in the attic…
I.
Let’s go back to the beginning of September:
The first part of the Redskins’ season was supposed to be easy.
After a near-certain loss to the Giants in the season-opener, it was supposed to be five gimmees before the Philadelphia Eagles on Monday, October 26.
Now the waning days of October are upon us. A whole lot of people are crooning the Redskins Blues.
But let us call to mind these words of our Lord:
Weep not for me but for your children. If this is what they do when the wood is green, what will they do when the wood is dry? (Luke 23:28,31)
Green wood (Weeks 2-6): Rams, Lions, Bucs, Panthers, and Chiefs
Dry wood (Wks 7-16): Eagles, Broncos, Cowboys, Saints, Giants, etc.
3-13 is a rosy scenario for this Redskins season. Pardon me while I get back in the balloon…
II.
The Lord Jesus helped us out by explaining life in His perspicacious parables.
For example: The one about how we are like servants awaiting our master’s return. Here is how it begins:
Gird your loins, and light your lamps, and be like servants who await their master’s return from a wedding, ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks. (Luke 12:35-36)
The Lord is urging us to be ready for the Final Reckoning, of course. But there is more.
I had always thought that the master could have been gone for any reason. Gone for a wedding, or gone fishing, or gone to find better football players on another continent, or gone on a weather-balloon ride–whatever. The point is that he is gone, and he could return anytime.
But of course it matters where he is. There are no throw-away lines in the parables of Christ.
The Master has gone to a wedding.
He took our human nature up to heaven. The angels rejoice. God has betrothed the human race to Himself. The Bridegroom stretched out His arms on the cross and won His Bride, and now the heavens are drunk with sober joy. They are dancing and singing the canticle which is too sublime for sound.
When He returns, He will be coming from the heavenly wedding banquet. He will bring the dew of angelic festivity with Him when He comes. He will be wearing the smile of the happy, chaste groom.
III.
A-Rod is OUT OF HIS MIND!!! (Click hot-link, and scroll down to 2009 post-season batting stats.)
The play of the weekend was A-Rod’s ninth-inning homer Friday night to tie Game 2.
The quote of the weekend was uttered by Larry Michael during the second quarter of this afternoon’s NFL game in North Carolina:
Carolina’s offense is the most inept we’ve seen, and we know ineptitude when we see it.
The melancholy moment of the weekend was when I ran down 33rd Street in Baltimore for the first time since 1995, and, intead of laying eyes on Memorial Stadium, I saw an unmowed field.
The history lesson of the weekend is:
In 1904, the first modern war broke out.
Russian and Japan fought over disputed territory. They used machine guns, mine fields, torpedoes, and telephone communications. All of the fighting took place in neutral territory, either in Korea or China.
It could have become a world war.
President Theodore Roosevelt had been in office for three years. He engineered the Treaty of Portsmouth, which brought the Russo-Japanese War to an end and led to forty years of peace between these two world powers.
In 1906, the year after the treaty was signed and the war ended, President Roosevelt was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
…The Holy Father went to the Czech Republic this past weekend.
He wanted to visit the relics of St. Wenceslaus, of course, and pray to the Infant of Prague.
(We have a Novena to the Infant at our parish every Tuesday at 8:00 a.m. and 6:30 p.m., by the way!)
But His Holiness’ main reason for heading east this past weekend was to be as far away from Detroit as possible. He was basically on the other side of the earth. He was 4,355 miles away from Ford Field when the darkness descended.
Father Mark White Blog 