Advent - Eucharist

We’re in the home stretch, but it’s not Christmas yet! First, we heard an amazing (my favorite) story this weekend about Mary (pregnant with Jesus) visiting her cousin Elizabeth (pregnant with John). John actually leaps in his mother’s womb at the mere presence of an unborn Jesus! God came into the world in such an inconspicuous manner—in the womb of Mary as a baby. This is obviously one of many reasons why the Church is against abortion, but it is also a testament to the source and summit of our faith—the Eucharist.

Every Sunday at every Mass, Jesus again enters this world in an inconspicuous way. He becomes physically present (Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity) in what was once a piece of bread. Like an infant Jesus, it’s easy to confuse this Sacrament for something else. Yet, like John, we should recognize His presence and leap with joy!

Advent - Joy

Sunday was the third of four in our current Advent season. Gaudete Sunday. Joy. We take a break from waiting and anticipating to rejoice! There are a few reasons this happens, and it’s not just so our priests can wear rose-colored vestments (don’t call them pink… whatever you do).

1.     We are celebrating that Christmas is coming! It’s not “Christmas MIGHT come.” Christmas IS coming!

2.     We can rejoice because Christmas has already come! The first Christmas was when Jesus entered the world, which has already happened.

3.     As Catholics, the Mass is ALWAYS a time to rejoice. It doesn’t matter what liturgical season it is, Christ has come and conquered death and given us His body to consume.

Catholics should always be filled with joy because we know Jesus. We know that He came down to save us. We know that He died to make that happen. We know joy because we know salvation.

Advent - Reconcile

The Second Sunday of Advent is now behind us, and as of this writing, Christmas is 18 days away. So let’s take an inventory of Advent so far? Has the priority been shopping, party-planning, flight-booking, etc? Or has significant time been spent to “prepare the way of the Lord, [and] make straight His paths”? Whether you answered “yes” to the first or second question, there is still time to prepare. One of the best ways is to head to the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

John the Baptist proclaimed a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins; however, it wasn’t until Jesus’ death on the Cross that Baptism had that power. Baptism can only occur once in a lifetime though, and I’m pretty sure you’ve sinned since then. Luckily, the sins committed since then can be absolved in Reconciliation. Enter the Christmas season purified and ready to receive the Christ the Newborn King, run to the Sacrament of Reconciliation!

Advent - Hope

This year, the first week of Advent and the first candle we light represents hope. We aren’t just hoping for a good Christmas, the opportunity to buy gifts and travel, or for a new N*SYNC Christmas album (I know some of you are… don’t lie). But hope, as a Catholic virtue, means trusting in God. Trusting that God will answer His promise of sending Jesus again to finish His mission, and we eagerly await this second coming.

Advent is a time of great anticipation—recalling the anticipation of the Old Testament. We are waiting for our Savior. We often have misguided hope. Our trust gets misplaced. Even though Christ has already come, Advent both reminds us of how exciting that fact is by getting us excited for the celebration of His original coming while directing our attention towards His second coming. This isn’t a season of shopping (or N*SYNC), but a season of anticipation and hope.

Christ the King

Yesterday, we celebrated the Solemnity of Christ the King. As Catholics, we pledge our allegiance not to a country or a job or even to our family, but to the God of the universe—a King. When we accept this, everything we do as Catholics begins to make sense.

At Mass, we kneel, bow, and genuflect because our King is present. Notice when we do all of those things and the direction in which we do them.  We kneel when the Blessed Sacrament (Christ our King) is present. We bow at the moment of consecration. We genuflect as we went enter or exit our pew in the direction of the tabernacle. Recognizing why we do this and for Whom changes everything.

Knowing Who shows up at every single Mass and is present 364 days per year in the tabernacle, there should never be an excuse or reason not to see celebrate our King every Sunday (or more)!

Tithing

Let’s say you have $10. Biblically, $1 of that belongs to the Church. Tithing is not something we as Catholic do very well. Most of us are blessed to be making far more than $10 per week, yet frequently put $1-20 in the collection basket.

Beyond our monetary donation, can you imagine what our lives would look like if we also donated 10% of our waking time to the Church?  That would be about an hour and half.

Why is it so difficult for us to give? The woman in the Gospel reading this Sunday didn’t have much, but she gave EVERYTHING. She gave all “$10”! Seemingly, it was insignificant and couldn’t help all that much, but that’s not that point. She was willing to sacrifice EVERYTHING for God and the Church. Whether it’s our time, money, or the effort we put into following Church teaching, I think we can all give and sacrifice a little more.

Final Destination - Sainthood

Yesterday, we celebrated the Solemnity of All Saints. Our goal as Christians is to reach Heaven. More important than the goals we set in our education or career, the end game is to be united with Christ, and the path isn’t an easy one. The world and those around us make it difficult. Our own choices lead us astray. And through it all, we’re called to hold the course and fix our eyes on Christ. However, the reward is greater than anything our imaginations can comprehend.

As Catholics, we’re lucky to have Christ’s physical presence in the Eucharist. However, much like at Christ’s own baptism, in heaven, we will be together with the entirety of the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. No movie or book (except the Bible) can describe what it’s like to be in the presence of God in Heaven, and the only way to know what it’s like is to get there. The Destination is worth the struggle of the journey.

Blindness

Most of us are able to see (maybe not very well, but enough to get by) and are lucky enough not to know what it’s like to be blind. We get to see the smiling faces of our parents, friends, or children. We get to see the beauty of God’s creation. Blindness steals this from us. Similarly, the beauty of this life can be stolen from us if we suffer from spiritual blindness. Maybe we can see God’s creation, but we haven’t really SEEN it.

Recently, I heard someone speak about our knowledge of God using two Spanish words—conocer and saber. I am by no means bilingual, but these two words speak to two different things. Conocer is to know someone. Saber is to know something. Do we know (saber) God? Or do we KNOW (conocer) God? If we only know (saber) God, it’s time to get our vision checked and repaired.

Too Much of a Good Thing

Ever heard the saying, “You can never have too much of a good thing”? Well, that’s not true. Sorry. It’s actually a pretty easy trap to fall into. The Gospel this Sunday is the famous story of the rich man whom Jesus told to sell of his belongings. Jesus went on to say how difficult it is for the rich to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.

We have varying degrees of monetary riches; however, we all have a wealth of riches that can seem like great things, but can still lead us away from God—social media, friends, sports, school, food, and yes, money too. If we’re not careful, our priorities can get out of order and something that was good has now replaced God, which is not good. If you’re allowing your happiness to be determined by something that can be lost or taken away, you’re putting it in the wrong place.

Love and Marriage

Getting married is one of the most awesome things you can do (so sayeth the guy who has only been married for a few months). All kidding aside, it really is. God laid out four possible vocations, and each of them are equally awesome, but let’s face it, most of us will be called to the vocation of marriage. The Gospel this weekend spoke about the permanence of marriage—a covenant between husband, wife, and God. However, whether we’re called to marriage or not, this pertains to all of us. Confused? Let me explain.

Christ is the groom, and the Church is the bride. Christ sacrificed Himself for us, and we’re called to serve Him—much like a marriage. It’s a circle of giving. Also like a marriage, we can try to break, violate, or divorce ourselves through our actions. Just like wedges shouldn’t be driven into a marriage between spouses, we also should not divorce (or separate) ourselves from Christ.

Cut It Off

We’d all look a little funny if we actually cut off the things that “cause” us to sin. The Gospel reading this Sunday is one we all know very well, but what’s always interesting to me is that a hand (or computer, bottle of alcohol, etc.) doesn’t actually cause us to sin. It’s the tool that we use to sin. The causes to sin are internal, and much more difficult to remove. Concupiscence is our inherent inclination to sin. Until we redirect our focus from the temporary to the eternal, this inclination is always going to get the better of us. Sure, we can cut off our hand or get rid of our phone (pick your poison), but we’d find another way. We can’t control our desire to sin until we realize that the “rules” are for love and from love, and cutting out the temptations are a way of saying, “I love you,” back to God.

I'm #1!

I think the whole concept of the first shall be last and the last shall be first is kind of interesting in society where we are constantly told that we need to be first. We need to be #1. Whether it’s in school or on the football field (have you ever been to a high school game in this state?), second place is just the first loser.

But really, we don’t even need to look any further than a typical Sunday Mass. Everyone wants to be the first for Communion so that they can head out. And this is also a great example of how the last shall be first, since they are the only ones who have actually fully attended Mass (in case you didn’t know, that final blessing is a big deal). It’s important that we take a step back and truly look beyond the temporary and seek what is eternal (God).

Pick Up That Cross

Being Catholic isn’t easy. If anyone says it is, they either lied to you… or they aren’t very good Catholics. It’s a daily struggle where we’re called to deny ourselves and our desires in favor of God and His desires for our lives. This can seem burdensome if we don’t truly understand our relationship with Him. If we don’t understand that living our lives a certain way is in service to Him, then all those things we “get to do” for Him seem more like things we “can’t do” or “have to do.” These can seem like crosses to bear, but in reality, the greater crosses come from truly following God… Yikes.

Following God might mean losing some friends or changing your weekend plans. It might mean changing some habits or dating someone else (or no one). And it definitely means refocusing Sundays towards Mass. But isn’t that worth pleasing God?

Can You Hear Me Now?

In elementary school, I loved whenever the hearing test people would show up. I always got super excited because I knew I had such good hearing that they would always tell me how impressed they were. Despite years of having the volume way up on my headphones and car radio, it’s still pretty decent. There is a difference between hearing and listening though.

Hearing is what we do when we have Netflix on in the background while doing other stuff. We hear the noise and the conversations, but we’re not actually listening. Listening means we actually have to receive the message into our brains and think. We can hear our parents tell us to do something, but listening would mean not spacing out. This Sunday’s Gospel touched on this perfectly and is applicable to the Mass itself. Are you simply hearing God’s Word, the homily, and the prayers? Or are you actually listening to them?

Subordinate Wives?

This week, the Gospel reading continued to focus on the Bread of Life Discourse. I want to take a closer look at our second reading, though, and what it means for the women (and men) of our Church. The reading talks about how wives should be submissive to their husbands. Sound the alarm! There goes the Church being all misogynistic! No. That's not it at all.

Christ is the Groom, and the Church is the Bride. Jesus died to save the Church. His body was broken so that the Body of Christ (the Church) might live. The Body of Christ has Jesus at the head. The Church is a part of Christ, and Christ is a part of the Church. Similarly, a husband is a part of his wife and a wife is a part of her husband. A husband sacrificially serves his wife. She follows the lead of her husband. Still think this is archaic? Hang on...

This isn't a one-directional teaching. When we look at how Christ sacrificed everything for the Church (the people), we also see how the Church is called to sacrifice everything for Him. It's a circle. In a perfect marriage, and in a perfect church, the groom and the bride live to serve each other. Furthermore, Jesus says, “no can come to me unless it is granted him by my father.” Both Christ (the groom) and the Church (the bride), need to be in communion with the Father and with each other.

First Blog!

Well, to start, my name is Jason Trujillo, and I’m new to St. Monica in Dallas. I came all the way from California to join your family as the director of youth and young adult ministry, and I am so happy to be here! Every Monday, I will be posting a blog that breaks down what happened at Mass the day before in a way that hopefully relates to you whether you’re the youngest 6^th grader or the oldest young adult (is that an oxymoron?). So here it goes…

Yesterday, the Gospel continued Jesus’ Bread of Life Discourse, so obviously one of the main topics is the Eucharist. This week though, the focus is on faith. Not “faith” in the terms of our belief system or religion, but “faith” the theological virtue—which means “belief in God.” As Catholics, we believe that the Eucharist is the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus. At every Mass, bread and wine are consecrated into something so much more. The Eucharist is not a symbol. It is not part Jesus and part wine. It is fully Jesus! Our faith in the Eucharist, in believing this Sacred Mystery, is belief in God.

What does this mean for us? Jesus is present at every Mass! He is present in the Adoration Chapel and in the tabernacle. It means that when we receive the Eucharist, we are literally taking Jesus’ body into our own. So the question really is, “What does this mean to YOU?”