Sunday Evangelium - Totus2us

Fr Marcus: "The coming of Christ casts a different light upon this duty of fraternal correction. It doesn't take it away but it reframes it. .. Everything must be done through love and for love. We don't correct others from duty but because we care. The judgement in the end will be about how we have loved. Remember that wonderful saying of St John of the Cross: 'It will soon be night and we will be questioned about love.' If we don't have this love then fraternal correction is meaningless. Furthermore Jesus does not allow us to deal with this problem except by being radically personal and discreet." Music by Edwin Fawcett. For much more, visit Totus2us.com - dedicated to Our Lady, it is inspired by our holy fathers St John Paul II, Papa Benedict XVI and Pope Francis. Totus Tuus (All Yours) was JPII's motto to Mary. Our Lady is also everything to us - Totus2us.

Fr Andrew: "In today’s Gospel we have one of the most famous, perhaps the most famous, of all the accounts of the resurrection appearances of Jesus Christ. Thomas does not believe the resurrection and he sets a test for believing that Jesus has risen, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” A few days later, Jesus himself appears and invites Thomas to conduct his test, to which Thomas responds, “My Lord and my God!” Now this appearance of Jesus, with a body and wounds, emphasizes that the Resurrection is physical: the risen Christ is not a ghost or disembodied soul or mere symbol of the continuation of the Christian message. There is, nevertheless, something of a mystery about Christ's risen body. If Jesus has the power to rise from the dead, why does he still bear the wounds of the cross? Furthermore, what do the wounds of the risen Christ imply for our own vocation as followers of Christ?" Music by Edwin Fawcet

Fr Andrew: "So it is Jesus who has made Baptism effective and life-giving for us, and by submitting to Baptism, He leads the way for us to follows. He teaches us the humility to make use of the Sacraments in the way they have been given to us. He teaches us that Baptism washes away sin, opens heaven and enables us to know and to love the Most Holy Trinity. Let us thank the Lord for opening the way to our salvation through Baptism. May Baptism bear its proper fruit in all of us, so that one day we may see the face of God in Heaven." Music by Edwin Fawcett. Visit Totus2us.com for much more. Totus Tuus (All Yours) was the motto of Blessed John Paul II to Mary. Our Lady is also everything to us - Totus 2us.

Fr Andrew: "So why does God give us the Eucharist as a sacrifice as well as a sacrament? One way of answering this question is to recall that God ultimately wants us to bring us to heaven, where, as St John tells us, “We shall be like Him.” Now the attribute that we most naturally associate with God is power, but the attribute that is most central to God's knowledge of Himself is love. “God is love,” as St John tells us. So becoming 'like God' does not simply mean sharing in the power of God, but most essentially sharing in the love of God, of loving as God loves. Now love is intimately connected with sacrifice, the notion of a sacrifice being associated with an outpouring of something that is precious to oneself for the sake of another person. So in the Mass, God gives us not only the opportunity to participate in the strength of God by means of a sacrament, but also in the love of God by means of a sacrifice. More specifically, in the Mass we participate in the perfect sacrifice, that of Christ on the cross

Fr Marcus: "The Christian Catholic faith does shed a new light on that created reality, like a bright torch. We come to realise that the family is a natural icon for God. Through Jesus, we have come to know that God is not just a singular person but a communion of persons and that the eternal Father and his Word have so much love between them that this constitutes a third eternal person, the Spirit or Wisdom. This is the Trinity. As we celebrate Trinity Sunday also today it is time to remind ourselves that creation comes forth from God who is eternally a family. The family is an expression of our dignity as beings made in God's image, made with a body and a soul." Music by Edwin Fawcett. Visit Totus2us.com for much more. Totus Tuus (All Yours) was the motto of Blessed John Paul II to Mary. Our Lady is also everything to us - Totus 2us.

Fr Andrew: "While the human mind can range over space and time, the present human body is bound to an essentially two-dimensional existence. What the Ascension of Jesus shows us, first, is that the Resurrected human body does not suffer from this limitation: the Resurrected body can go wherever the beatified soul desires. Indeed, a distant echo of this yearning can be seen in the way that the superheroes of popular culture, in particular the superman, a distant derivative of the work of Nietzsche, are almost always portrayed as being capable of flight. What is most significant about the Ascension, however, is that Jesus' human nature is alos described as sitting at the right hand of God. In an image given to us by St Catherine of Siena, it is as if the human nature of Jesus Christ has become like a great bridge, stretching from our present earthly life into the presence of God in heaven. This bridge completes the process of opening a way for human beings to attain eternal happiness: the soul being saved by th

Fr Marcus: "All the messages of the readings today are about love. There's an ancient story about St John the Apostle who, throughout his writings, had only one theme: the love of God and the love of neighbour. Someone once asked him, 'Why do you not write about other things' and his response was 'There is only love, there is nothing more.' You see, love is at the centre of everything, like the hub at the centre of the wheel; the spokes are like the doctrines, the commandments, the good works, but they all come from the centre which is love. .... So what kind of love are we talking about when Jesus says 'Abide in my love' and 'Love one another as I have loved you'? It's his love but what kind of love is this? Well, it's the love of loves. It has a unique name in Greek called agape, This goes beyond the basic commandment to love God and neighbour in any conventional sense. It's a love that is godly, giving and gratuitous." Music by Edwin Fawcett. Visit Totus2us.com for much more. Totus Tuus (All Yours) was the

Fr Andrew: "The grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God and the Communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” These words show how a reference to ‘grace’ begins the Mass, after the invocation of the Trinity. A reference to grace appears also in the Hail Mary, in which Mary is described as being ‘full of grace’ and Catholics of an older generation may be familiar with the phrase ‘state of grace’. The principle of grace underpins today’s Readings and the idea of Christian vocation, especially pertinent to today’s World Day of Prayer for Vocations. But what is grace and why is it important?" Music by Edwin Fawcett. Visit Totus2us.com for much more. Totus Tuus (All Yours) was the motto of Blessed John Paul II to Mary. Our Lady is also everything to us - Totus 2us.

Fr Marcus: "There’s no cheap grace in this world, there’s no easy Christianity, no pain – no gain, no cross – no crown, no mortification – no sanctification, no-sacrifice – no resurrection. There is indeed joy and it is a deeper joy than anything else in this world can give, there is glory greatly than all the kingdoms of the world, there is love more profound than any human relationship, there is life and without end – but it all comes through the cross, through trustful and obedient acceptance. The Greeks could get what they really wanted, that real beauty and lasting goodness, but it required the acceptance of the cross. That is the challenge for every Christian, that is our challenge of the next 12 days as we prepare for Good Friday itself." Music by Edwin Fawcett. Visit Totus2us.com for much more. Totus Tuus (All Yours) was the motto of Blessed John Paul II to Mary. Our Lady is also everything to us - Totus 2us.

Fr Andrew: "The reason why treating our relationship to God as a contract is so abhorrent is that what God wants is for us to enjoy a relationship with him that is second-personal, not third-personal, of an 'I' to 'Thou', not an individual to a remote benefactor. In other words, God wants us to love with him what he loves, and sacrifice with him what he sacrifices, as happens at every Mass. In today's First Reading, this relationship is spoken of as a covenant not a contract, a union of soul as in the Christian sacrament of marriage and not just an exchange of goods, and this is also the context in which, I think, we should understnad how we are meant to use this opportunity of Lent. Our goals in Lent should not be to increase our credit balance with God, which is abhorrent and impossible anyway, but to repent of what you might call our adulterous spiritual liaisons, those times in which we give our souls, in effect, over to what is not of God, especially the false gods of pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice,

Fr Andrew: "My own answer to the question of why so few Christians experience the Holy Spirit is this: the Holy Spirit is experienced mainly in divinely inspired action, but very few Christians are willing to surrender to such action, a surrender that is associated with genuine love of God, with sacrifice and the renunciation of the deceptive love of evil. Many of us, to a greater of lesser extent, are like the people that Jesus first encounters in the Gospels. We want God to help us and to heal us - but mainly so that we can then get on with our lives in peace and prposperity. God will, of course, help us often in material ways, but God wants us to go further than this. He wants us to surrender our whole lives over to Him, to really be able to say "thy will be done", not in the manner of a slave but in the manner of a beloved child. This surrender is an entirely different matter from merely asking for gifts, and it is something that we tend to find very hard. This difficulty of this surrender is, I think, wh

Fr Andrew: "An extreme version of this fear of illness and suffering seems to be much of the inspiration for the increase in suicides today and the drive to promote the practice of euthanasia, the killing of those deemed unfit to live. Many saints, by contrast, have made a special point of overcoming their natural repulsion or fear for some of the worst diseases, especially leprosy. They've looked beyond the disease to see the person suffering as a beloved child of God. For St Francis of Assisi, a major turning point in his path to extreme holiness was when he embraced a leper. St Damien, who died in 1889 after caring for lepers for many years, is the first officially recognised saint of Hawaii. What then inspires people like St Francis, St Damien and many others, who are largely unknown, to care for the sick and outcast in this way? The most straightforward answer is that, by surrendering to the love of God, they were given the gifts that they needed to accomplish great deeds. Their lives show the fruit of t

Fr Marcus: "Our task therefore is to awaken our age out of its apathy and indifference to consider that life may be worth living, that there may be some meaning to our being born into this colourful world, that there might be something a little more profound about those whom we love than a random mutation of chemicals, that death may be questioned and need not be seen as the end. This is the way of Job. There is perhaps more to people than the next pleasure, the next honour, the next victory. Our job is to convince people to see further, to question more, to offer the goodness that St Paul speaks of. ... I invite you, finally, to listen to the words of Pope Benedict: 'Only where God is seen, does life truly begin. Only when we meet the living God in Christ do we begin to know what life is. We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God: each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary. There is nothing more beautiful than to be surpr

Fr Andrew: "Regardless of the success or otherwise of all impersonal substitutes for God, a deeper problem remains. We are ourselves personal beings, and so it is unsatisfactory to propose that whatever created the cosmos is sub-personal. More specifically there is a natural desire not only to know that there is a God, but to know God, to be able to relate to God in a first to second person way, as an 'I' to a 'you'. On this point therefore the denial of a personal God therefore creates unusual dangers for humanity. If God, the Father Almighty, the true God, is denied or rejected, then there is an incompleteness in us, like a house that is left empty. And the problem with leaving a house empty is that it can be occupied by squatters or parasites. To give an example, the lesson of recent centuries is that in those places where Christianity was suppressed, those countries were not left in a state of spiritual neutrality, but tended to end up worshiping something else, often accompanied with a reign of terror."

Fr Andrew: "Many Christians however still live with divided hearts, adding some practices of the City of God to lives that are still shaped to some degree by the City of Man. As a result many Christians are less effective and fruitful in this world than they should be. The step which most Christians find difficult is to surrender all things to God as revealed in His Son Jesus Christ, and to surrender things to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. This surrender may or may not involve a physical abandonment of our possessions, as the Apostles did in today's Gospel, by abandoning their fishing nets and following Christ. But this surrender does involve putting God first, whatever our walk in life, to devoting significant time to daily prayer and the Sacraments, to following our God-given vocation and seeing the passing things of this world from the perspective of our true home which is in heaven." Music by Edwin Fawcett. Visit Totus2us.com for much more. Totus Tuus (All Yours) was the motto of Blessed John Paul II t

Fr Andrew: "In preparation for the Year of Faith beginning on 11th October 2012, I would like to devote some homilies this year to a systematic exploration of the faith, beginning with the Creed. As we have just celebrated Christmas, it is also appropriate to focus on the central section of the Creed, devoted to Jesus Christ. The words of the Creed are of course familiar to all of us who attend Sunday Mass but that very familiarity means it is tempting perhaps to recite the words without thinking about them. But these words are like gold, and just as gold is purified by fire to burn away dross, these words were chosen, tested and purified through centuries of debate and considerable suffering, in order to assist in our salvation." Music by Edwin Fawcett. Visit Totus2us.com for much more. Totus Tuus (All Yours) was the motto of Blessed John Paul II to Mary. Our Lady is also everything to us - Totus 2us.

Fr Andrew: "Today we celebrate the first disclosure of the Son of God to the gentiles, to the non-Jewish people, to Magi or Wise Men from beyond the borders of ancient Israel. These men probably came from Persia, the area today known as Iran. .. But we know little about these men except that they must have had remarkable humility. In their search for truth, they were prepared to go wherever they were guided by the star. They left their country and travelled first to Jerusalem and finally to a humble dwelling in Bethlehem, and when they saw the child Jesus with his mother Mary, the Bible records an extraordinary action: these wise men, presumabely notables of some wealth in their own country, fell to their knees and worshipped. They worshipped because they had an epiphany or theophany. In the face of Christ, they recognised the face of God-made-man." Carol - In the Bleak Midwinter. Visit Totus2us.com for more. Totus Tuus (All Yours) was the motto of Blessed John Paul II to Mary. Our Lady is also everything to

Fr Andrew: "I invite you to picture in your minds eye the image of the stable, with representatives of every aspect of God's creation gathering around the manger: the child's mother Mary, her husband Joseph, the shepherds who have come in from the fields, the Wise Men shortly to arrive from the East, the ox and the ass who know their Master's crib and the star in the sky. They have come to Bethlehem not simply to revere the birth of a great man, some future prophet or world leader, they have come to worship God Himself; they have come to gaze on the face of God, God-made-Man for our salvation." Carol - Away in a Manger. Visit Totus2us.com for more. Totus Tuus (All Yours) was the motto of Blessed John Paul II to Mary. Our Lady is also everything to us - Totus 2us.

Fr Marcus: "We're made for the lights of eternity, we're made for God. God became man, born that man no more may die, born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth. He became one with our humanity, not with an animal, a plant or even a planet. He became one with us and it tells us about ourselves that we're made for him and our hearts will be restless until they rest in him. Lets allow him on this night to subvert us! To enter clandestinely as a warrior into our soul, to break down and topple all those idols, all those false things that hold us back, because he will bring light. O Christian realise tonight in the wonder of the manger your nobility. Amen." Carol - Away in a Manger. Visit Totus2us.com for more. Totus Tuus (All Yours) was the motto of Blessed John Paul II to Mary. Our Lady is also everything to us - Totus 2us.

Fr Andrew: "Yet throughout all these centuries of tribulation, the promise of God in the first reading remained, namely that God Himself would make a house in which to dwell, and that the sovereignty of David's line and throne would be established forever. And this is the background against which the events of Christmas are highlighted, like a light set in the darkness, like a mystery at last revealed, in the light of which the whole history of the Old Testament is seen as a foreshadowing and a prefigurement. For what St Paul describes as the Good News is something genuinely and uniquely new in the world, namely that God has become man and dwelt among us. The temple that God has prepared is not the gold and stone of the Temple of Solomon, but the body and blood of Jesus Christ himself. The ark of the covenant is no longer a casket overlaid in gold, but the Virgin Mary, the Immaculate Conception, who held the living Word of God. And when God lies in a manger so that we can at last see him face to face, he is n