It’s time to regain the sense of wonder! Giving Back to God His Sovereignty.

[Music] it is good to give thanks to you o lord the fathers of mercy are so thankful today because yesterday two of our men were ordained deacons in case you haven't been observant enough they're up here with us now and we're so proud of them and we look forward to seeing them perform great things in god's name you know in today's gospel reading from the fourth chapter of the gospel of saint mark we read two more of our lord's parables the parable of the good seed and the parable of the mustard seed the parable of the good seed is only found in the gospel of saint mark and it's very short but it has great significance the man in the parable is this like the sower and he scatters the seed and leaves the results to processes outside of his knowledge and his control the man sees the cop the crop grow but he knows not how our lord tells us the kingdom of god comes to fulfillment according to god's action essentially so we as priests we as newly ordained deacons we as missionaries preach but the results are beyond our control ultimately it's a work of god's grace and that is something we must never forget if we think we're gonna win the world for christ by relying on our own talents our own wishes our own plans we're not going to accomplish anything because ultimately it's a work of god's grace so we must have to come to the understanding that there are some things that go well beyond our understanding it's okay to say that i don't know everything that's okay because guess what i don't and i believe that one of the greatest problems in today's world and in our church today is the loss of the sense of wonder the loss of the recognition of god's awesomeness modern man with his relativistic world view thinks that he knows everything and he doesn't we've lost the sense of the sacred we've lost the sense of mystery and losing our sense of wonder leads to a lack of commitment because if we are not in awe of the awesomeness of god we start to look at ourselves and we lose our zeal and our commitment with this way of thinking objective absolute truths have lost their significance what's important now in today's society is accepting the narrative of the elite we are a society they say that do not need god for example cnn's chris cuomo said a few months ago if you believe in one another and if you do the right thing for yourself and your community things will get better in this country you don't need help from above it's within us end of quote and so cardinal ratzinger just before he was elected pope in his homily in 2005 saw the danger of this way of thinking and he said and i quote dictatorship of relativism that recognizing nothing is definite and which leaves us as the ultimate measure only one's ego and desires having a clear faith according to the credo of the church is often labeled as fundamentalism yet relativism that is letting oneself be tossed and swept along by every wind of teaching appears the sole attitude acceptable to today's standards get in line be quiet that's all we hear now so you see god has become to many irrelevant god's throne is being usurped as pope benedict says in space alvade in section number 17 he basically says that the hope of restoration no longer lies in the power of the gospel and the coming of the kingdom of god but rather the restoration will come in scientific discovery in which a totally new world will emerge the kingdom of man end of quote for many people hoping in god is archaic our hope now according to modern society is in science follow the science that's all we've heard for a year follow the science so they say it is science that will save humanity they say science will heal us science will create new life science will manufacture food science will rewire genetics science will produce miracles like turning boys into girls i'm sorry but that's child abuse science will manipulate the weather they tell us they say who needs religion once again pope benedict who is on top of all of this he says for many praying to god appears outmoded pointless because we can build whatever we want we don't realize we are reliving the same experience as babel that we are building a new tower of babel in the modern world and just as the people in the old testament were humbled god will humble us if we don't wake up so you might think gee father david's anti-science no i'm not i love science science is good science is good if it's good science if it's based on the truth it is good if god is in the equation it is good but once you take god out of the equation you take truth out of the equation and then you run into all kinds of problems because then people come up with their presuppositions and they come up with their systems if you if you obey their presuppositions if you believe their presuppositions if you obey their theories then you have to accept their whole system and that's a dangerous road to go down i'm tired of people saying things like you know that rock in your backyard it's 5 million years old oh really how do you know that when the only accurate form of dating is carbon dating that is only good for about 6 000 years is guesswork and you're going to tell me to listen to your theories i want the truth i want the truth and it's okay to say that we don't understand everything in the world because we don't and these same people in the church want to wreck our theology so to speak especially scriptural exegesis you know their first method is to do away with the miracles of jesus so they belittle the miracles they try to make the miracles unbelievable or unreasonable of course they're unreasonable they were they're miracles you can't explain why that happened it just happened but it's historical facts i remember listening about a homily by a priest he was talking about the feeding of the five thousand and he said those people were not dumb they were going out into the wilderness no way would they have gone out there without food they all had food but the real miracle is they shared it with each other are you kidding me and when you believe things like that when you start to believe things like that all the rest of the sacred scriptures fall apart and before you know it you have a a religion of man rather than a religion of god miracles happen i'm thinking of lourdes i had the wonderful opportunity to visit there back a few years ago there are 67 recorded miracles where panels of doctors looked at these 67 different cases and said they have no logical explanation why these people were healed that's what a miracle is actually there's over 7 000 cures that took place at lourdes but they only investigated 67 out of the 7 000 because god is working in this world all the time in our shrine of uh of our lady of good help of wisconsin uh the fathers of mercy staff that shrine and the priests who work there will tell you miracles are taking place physical miracles but mostly spiritual miracles it's a wonderful thing to see and so we have to be very careful that the science that we follow comes from the truth if you take god out of science you take truth out of science and then you have problems so it is our duty our calling to bring back to the forefront that we must foster wonder and amazement in our own lives once again you know it starts in the home parents need to teach their children and grandparents need to teach their grandchildren for example the sacredness and the holiness of god's name i and my siblings we were taught this by our dad every time the name of jesus was mentioned in our home our dad's head would bow he didn't order us to do it he was teaching us by example that the name of jesus meant a lot to him as it should to all of us i remember being on the shores of the ocean and hearing the crashing waves and i couldn't help myself that praise song shout to the lord came to mind with the verse mountains will bow and the seas will roar at the sound of your name and it just lifted up my heart it lifted up my heart and i thought i don't deserve this i don't deserve to be on the shores of the ocean and watching these crashing waves what an awesome gift we need to influence other people too about this how many times i'm ashamed to say that i've heard the lord's name used in vain and i didn't stand up for our lord i went to a small catholic college in virginia and after the afternoon classes some of us would go out and play basketball on the outdoor courts and some young men who were not catholic and who were not students at the college would come out and play with us and remember this one day this one kid that came out from town we used to call them townies that's kind of demeaning i guess but anyway this one kid from town started to use the lord's name in vain and he said jesus christ and my friend john corrigan said is lord i kind of like that he changed a curse right into a prayer of praise right on the basketball court in a very non-confrontational way that's a good thing that's a good thing or what about the lord's prayer you know at every mass and we're going to have it today at mass the lord's prayer just before we receive holy communion right they are the words of god the perfect prayer and the priest prays this prayer before we pray the our father the lord's prayer together the priest says at the savior's command and formed by divine teaching we dare to say we dare to say the only right the only way that right was given to us was because it came from god himself jesus christ to actually even say his name our father what an awesome thing what an awesome thing we have to teach our children how to fall in love with god's creation the awe of god's creation i remember when i was young and before i joined the father so i was younger once you know and before i joined the fathers of mercy i was in the workaday world up in upstate new york and i remember one morning on my day off it was a crisp cold beautiful autumn morning there was a frost on the ground the colors were at their peak on the trees it was glorious a blue sky without a cloud in it the sun was shining so bright and as i was walking down this dirt road with my shotgun hunting i started to break out in song and i started to sing at the top of my voice i sing of the mighty power of god and scared all the animals away i don't advise that kind of behavior for hunting expeditions but i couldn't help myself i was overwhelmed with the beauty of god's creation and we have to teach our children not to take these things for granted never take these things for granted or what about the way we act at mass do we have reverence we as adults because that's how the children learn they learn by observing us that we are filled with awe knowing that we're gonna march down that aisle and kneel at that communion rail and we're gonna touch god almighty and we are so excited about it it's such a great miracle that god gives himself to us at the command of a sinful priest the greatest act of humility is when god comes down upon that altar at the words of one of his creatures at the command of his sinful creature and what an awesome thing that is awesome almost to the point where we should just be overwhelmed with joy that we as catholics every day of the year can touch god almighty and so it should affect everything that we do during mass preparing ourselves for that moment that moment the most important thing that we will do this week is to touch god almighty saint thomas aquinas said that if the angels could be jealous of us they're not but if they could be jealous or envious of us it would be about the fact that we as human beings every day of the year can touch god almighty and they can't i've heard people say in the past i'm doing god a favor by going to church oh really really isn't it really the other way around god is doing me the greatest of favors by allowing me to be with him for a short while today and then one other thing that we can teach our children is to have gratitude to be thankful for everything that we have when i would speak to groups of children when i was preaching parish missions on a regular basis i would ask the children are there is there anything that you can be truly that you can take all you the credit for for having something or whatever and uh they would start naming off things i would tell them no no for example a boy would pull out pull out his wallet and said i had this wallet i made it with my own hands i bought the leather with my own money and it's mine i said oh really where did the leather come from did you create the leather it came from an animal that was created by god everything can be traced back to god except one thing the only thing that we can take credit for is our sinfulness and i don't want to take credit for that so i blame it on father john right anyway as one priest told me we have probably 10 000 things to be thankful for and what do we do we complain about the five things that we're not thankful for and that takes all of our effort and all of our emotions and we're miserable not recognizing the fact that we should be the most grateful people in the world without a doubt without a doubt and i'm closing my folder that's good news perhaps the biggest miracle of all is that an omnipotent all-powerful all-knowing all-awesome all-loving god who doesn't need any one of us because he is perfectly happy within the most blessed trinity the awesomeness of the fact that he wants us he became one of us he died for us and that my friends is a mystery thank god that i'm not god i may have blown up the world a whole long time ago he is so good so i pray that we will come back to our senses and really appreciate the awesomeness the holiness the grandest splendor of god and that that will always be at the center of our hearts you

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Keywords: Fathers of Mercy, It’s time to regain the sense of wonder!, Giving Back to God His sovereignty., Father David Wilton CPM, https://fathersofmercy.com/giving/

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Length: 23min 2sec (1382 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 13 2021