Friday Frivolity: Catholic Heaven


"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine


Would you like to get more out of Mass this Sunday? I would suggest that if you want a more engaging Mass experience, you can’t do better than to spend some time with the Mass Readings beforehand.
Last week, Brant Pitre, one of my favourite theologians started a video channel to talk about the Readings for the upcoming Sunday. Enjoy 🙂

“It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the Church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities. We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.”
– Bishop Ken Untener
This is why saying “It’s not a child, it’s just a fetus” doesn’t make much sense…

Today’s video is a little different from normal. In the video below, a young Armenian woman sings a prayer (“Lord Have Mercy”) in the Church of the Holy Cross in Lake Van on Akdamar Island, Eastern Turkey, which belonged to the Armenians before the Armenian genocide by the Turks in 1915:
Last week I published an article outlining my response to an abortion meme posted on Facebook by a friend. Today I would like to do something similar. Below is a meme which I also saw on Facebook during Advent:

Once again, I would like to share a modified version of the response I posted in reply as I know some readers find it helpful to see how different Christians respond to stuff like this.
Don’t be a Sith…
