Sunday, April 27, 2014

Second Sunday of Easter – Sunday of Divine Mercy

Proof. It's always about the proof. We couldn't even canonize John XXIII and John Paul II without a little supernatural evidence. Do we really think God is that stingy with salvation? Yes, we can blame it all on ecclesial bureaucracy, but those rules don't just emerge out of nowhere. We've always been more comfortable retaining sins than forgiving them. Perhaps that is the real original sin Jesus tried to wash away: our stubborn unwillingness to take divine mercy for granted.

Sunday, April 20, 2014

The Resurrection of the Lord – The Mass of Easter Sunday

Yesterday, a local church left a door hanger at our home advertising their service for today. It is a very nice door hanger, with the tagline, "There Is More". I cannot help but think how right they are, although I doubt they had these words in mind when they wrote their own. Yes, there is more, much more that our Parent has to share with us. In fact, they offer it every day, freely and without strings. But we ignore them, because in our logic anything that good must be false and worthless. After all, the only reason that some of us will be lucky enough to enjoy heaven is because Jesus took a nasty beating on our behalf and then showed us what real power looks like. (Cue the Christian rock ballad.) But what if this weekend wasn't about God getting his pound of flesh? And what if she doesn't see us as the pieces of shit that we seem to see when we look in a mirror? What if they were just trying to get their beloved children's attention in some wild attempt at letting us know that their love for us is utterly limitless and unconditional? Yea, there I go with that too good to believe crap again.