The Lenten Mission Day 3

[Music] [Music] sorry [Music] is [Music] in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit amen hail mary full of grace so lord is with thee blessed art and blessed is the fruit of thy womb jesus christ [Music] mary queen of all saints pray for us saint joseph pray for us in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit please stand for the proclamation of the holy gospel the lord be with you a reading from the holy gospel according to john glory to you before the feast of passover jesus knew that his hour had come to pass from this world to the father he loved his own in the world and he loved them to the end the devil had already induced judas son of simon the iscariot to hand him over so during supper fully aware that the father had put everything into his power and that he had come from god and was returning to god he rose from supper and took off his outer garments he took a towel and tied it around his waist then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples feet and dry them with the towel around his waist he came to simon peter who said to him master are you going to wash my feet jesus answered and said to him what i am doing you do not understand now but you will understand later peter said to him you will never wash my feet jesus answered him unless i wash you you will have no inheritance with me simon peter said to him master then not only my feet but my hands and head as well jesus said to him whoever has bathed has no need except to have his feet washed for he is clean all over so you are clean but not all for he knew who would betray him for this reason he said not all of you are clean so when he had washed their feet and put his garments back on and reclined at table again he said to them do you realize what i have done for you you call me teacher and master and rightly so for indeed i am if i therefore the master and teacher have washed your feet you ought to wash one another's feet i have given you a model to follow so that as i have done for you you should also do the gospel of the lord it is a custom in the church that each day of the week is dedicated to a specific saint or devotion for example on thursdays we especially commemorate and remember jesus in the eucharist and the priesthood since holy thursday was the day that christ instituted both during the last supper fridays we especially remember our lord's passion that's why we have the stations of cross especially on fridays of lent we also remember and honor his sacred heart another day especially to do reparation for sins saturdays most of you if not all of you probably know this saturday is a day dedicated to the blessed virgin mary today we want to especially pray the rosary for peace especially first saturdays sundays we honor our lord and his resurrection it's like a little easter every sunday obviously we also honor the trinity mondays a day dedicated to angels if you don't pray to your guardian angel you might want to do so at least on monday but i highly recommend every day maybe even multiple times a day st michael the archangel other angels that we can have devotions to especially on mondays tuesdays it's a day we could especially pray for the poor souls in purgatory uh the whole month of november is dedicated to the poor souls in purgatory the faithful departed but it's good to keep that routine to pray for them and tuesday may be a good reminder to especially maybe offer a rosary or communion for someone who has past that we know or just in general for the poor souls in purgatory and wednesday which brings us to today today is a day dedicated to saint joseph now we actually are in the year of saint joseph so it's not just wednesdays the whole month of march by the way is dedicated to saint joseph but now we have a whole year dedicated to saint joseph i have a whole mission series on saint joseph i wish i could preach more about him but i can mention a few things about the holy father the patriarch of the west of the catholic church you know saint joseph can actually say i taught god how to work it's interesting well how can you teach god anything he already knows everything that's the definition of being god but because jesus assumed a human nature and became man he can learn something he already knew as god through human eyes through human ears by touching and tasting so who was the one appointed by our heavenly father to teach the son of god his trade saint joseph every day besides the sabbath day practically they were out there as jesus grew older saint joseph was the one teaching jesus how to be a carpenter and the gospels he is referred to as the son of a carpenter it shows you how much they valued their occupation and work so with that being said st joseph is the patron saint of workers or work work if it's done well with great love and offered to god especially at mass if you offer your work especially through the intercession of saint joseph you could sanctify yourself by doing it well sanctify others through it so when you offer your work even for the conversion of sinners if you do it for god's greater glory it has meritorious value if you think about it 90 of our lord's life that is 30 years out of 33 years that he lived on this planet was dedicated to ordinary work at home so he sanctified the ordinary such as washing dishes sweeping the floor it was not beneath the son of god to fold his clothes and to dust anything off at their house he redeemed the world just as much as he did by dying on the cross as he did by being a carpenter in saint joseph's workshop because it was god's will so do not think that any of the tasks that you do even on a daily basis do not have redemptive value that would be the devil so we want to do our work well with great love offering it as an acceptable sacrifice to god and saint joseph can teach you because he taught god himself saint joseph could also say i provided for god okay well god has everything how can you provide for god of course again jesus assumed a human nature and by the sweat of his brow of saint joseph's work he brought food to the table of the home at nazareth a roof over their head clothes for the son of god to wear all that comes through the hard work of saint joseph in the old testament there's a joseph that foreshadows or is a type of saint joseph of the new testament most of you if not all of you know the joseph of the old testament he was sold into slavery by his brothers so joseph of the old testament was able to interpret dreams he interpreted that there would be a famine in the land of egypt and he warned pharaoh and joseph was able to ration food now if you read the book of genesis it's very clear not only the people of egypt ate the food it says the whole world came to joseph or all of the earth depending on your translation that's a lot of people even back then what's better than feeding the whole world providing for the whole earth feeding god that's infinitely better providing for the son of god so saint joseph could help us especially with our needs not necessarily our temporal needs what we need in terms of continuing to stay alive such as food a house and so forth but our spiritual needs too we go to joseph as the patron of the church joseph send us holy priests we need priests to feed us with the truth we need religious to be an example of holiness so we could follow people such as saint mother teresa joseph help us provide for holy families for parents that are willing to sacrifice to have maybe many children for the kingdom of god joseph help us provide for these things last but not least joseph saint joseph is the patron of the dying again i could go on and on this is just things that i have to mention at least hear it briefly during this mission it is a custom in our church that saint joseph died in the hands of jesus and mary now at some point our saint joseph died before our lord's public ministry we know that because at the foot of the cross you have here here your your church has the blessed virgin mary and saint john the apostle at the foot of the cross one of the last things that jesus did before he died was he entrusted the blessed virgin mary his mother to saint john if you read the gospel of john it says she entered into his home there'd be no reason why the blessed virgin mary would enter into saint john's home if saint joseph was still living so at some point saint joseph died before our lord's public ministry so it's a custom that saint joseph died in the hands of jesus and mary so i personally pray to saint joseph at least two times a day that i may have a holy and happy death we don't know when that time will be but it will come it's inevitable but god willing we will have the most holy death that we can have possibly especially through the sacraments so what does it mean to die in the hands of jesus and mary well as i mentioned to die especially with the eucharist when you receive communion right before you die it's a very holy way to pass from this world obviously having confession maybe anointing of the sick if you're sick or elderly all of these sacraments also known as the last rites at that point is how you can die in the hands of jesus how can you die in the hands of mary i would assume most of you if not all of you pray the rosary every day good because the one prayer that you will say the most in your life especially if you pray the rosary every day would be the hail mary at the end of the hell mary we say holy mary mother of god pray for us now and at the hour of our death amen if you pray that a million times like we do praying the rosary do you think the blessed virgin mary wouldn't be there at the hour of your death these aren't just words we're spurting out we actually mean it the blessed virgin mary be by my side at the hour of my death so saint joseph if we go to him he could help us have a holy and happy death now again i wish i can preach more about saint joseph i have a whole mission i'm actually doing a mission later this lent on saint joseph which i'm looking forward to i can preach about many other saints saint anthony you have a statue of saint anthony besides being the patron saint of the lost i don't know if you're aware of this one of the greatest preachers eloquent speakers in the history of the catholic church he would be so eloquent with his preaching he would preach to the fish and the birds and they would come up to the surface of the water and the birds would listen to him preach i wish i can do that it seems like the birds do something else to me if i would try to preach to them so saint anthony he could maybe help someone that you know that needs preaching not that you have to tell them you could just ask saint anthony to pray for them uh padre pio another franciscan saint saint pew he had the gift of stigmata if you look even at the modern pictures padre pio would actually wear gloves so he wouldn't reveal that he had stigmata he didn't want to show off obviously he wanted to try to keep it a secret as much as possible padre pio was able to bilocate he was able to be at two places at once he was able to read people's minds in confession if someone withheld a sin because they were maybe too embarrassed to say it to padre pio they would say i'm i'm done with my confession and padre pio would say no you're not give me all of your sins you know that one sin that maybe mortal sin that you're too embarrassed so padre appeal would have that gift i don't i wouldn't necessarily pray for something like that that would be maybe father murphy has that gift to read people's minds in confession either way god gives all of these gifts whether a talent or a skill to these saints so they could help other people get to heaven whenever we have any gift any skill or talent it's not for our own glory it's always for other people so we can use it in an act of service to our brothers and sisters you know at times i mentioned this during the weekend masses if you were here i like to go into the classrooms and ask the students questions about heaven and after i ask you know who here wants to go to heaven usually everyone raises their hands sometimes i ask who here wants to become a saint and depending on the grade maybe two or three people raised their hands maybe they transferred from homeschooling they're usually very pious so but i tell them children do you realize it's the same question you can't go to heaven unless you become a saint that is the truth you know on november 1st we celebrate all saints day do you know who we celebrate that is everyone who is in heaven it's actually a holy day of obligation at least pre-coveted hopefully it will turn out to be a holy day of obligation soon so we celebrate everyone in heaven whom we call saints so someone will say father you know i i ask them to pray to become a saint i usually ask them pray to saint joseph or the blessed virgin mary to help you become a saint some people will giggle some people will say yeah sure father that's impossible for me to become a saint someone will even say maybe father i'm actually just aiming for purgatory someone will say okay here let me let me help you out here aim for heaven if you miss you'll end up in purgatory if you aim for purgatory and you miss i can't help you out after that for all eternity so in other words we sell ourselves short we don't think that we can become saints yet that is exactly our call that is our vocation that is the reason why we exist to be with god forever in heaven how can we not be saints if we have jesus in the eucharist if we have the blessed virgin mary and the rosary we have the fullness of truth in the teachings of the magisterium of the catholic church we have a myriad of saints interceding on our behalf we have a guardian angel and the rest of the million angels trying to help us get to heaven how can we not become saints so we pray and we recognize that this is our goal and it's something that we really should pray for every single day now obviously we have purgatory we have purgatory it's a temporary state if we are imperfect if we need to make reparation satisfaction for the sins that were already forgiven that's why we have this temporary state so we can be cleansed but i don't know about you i would rather skip purgatory okay we want to go directly to heaven that's why i'm emphasizing the whole indulgence thing of this mission but you can there's so many other ways to receive an indulgence as well because we want to go straight to heaven we want to see god face to face and god willing we want to intercede for our brothers and sisters here on this earth so they can get to heaven as well so every day i pray to become a saint i especially pray to the blessed virgin mary saint joseph many other saints that i'm very close to who are constantly interceding for each and every single one of us so really what's killing this world today and the church is a flatness a dullness a lukewarmness and we need to be convinced if we want to be happy if we want to be joyful we need to fall in love not any love first and foremost the love of god divine love then and only then will we truly be happy now i proclaim the gospel before this talk i know i'm fast forwarding this is from holy thursday and it's from the gospel of john and one of my favorite scripture passages by the way it says he loved his own in the world and he loved them to the end jesus did not love us simply with 50 of his divine love or 80 he proved his love by literally dying on the cross there's no greater love to show to your brothers and sisters than by giving yourself up for them especially in death so what does he do during the last supper we all know this he takes off his outer garments he wraps a towel around his waist and he starts to wash his disciples feet now we need to realize this is god this is god incarnate and he doesn't hesitate to wash his disciples feet why does he do this the best way to lead is to lead by example even though it's the son of god the king of kings and lord of lords he doesn't hesitate to stoop down and do the lowest thing he can for his friends his disciples now i remember meditating upon this gospel when i was first ordained a priest my first holy thursday celebration was at a poor claire monastery of nuns i mean what can you tell them okay pray more okay it's hard to tell them what to do okay but i remember meditating upon the this gospel of the last supper where jesus washed his disciples feet and i thought to himself i try to put myself in his shoes i don't know about you i don't like looking at feet i don't like touching them even my own i certainly don't like smelling them yet jesus had to do all three when he bent down and he washed his disciples feet at least indirectly i doubt he was closing his eyes when he was washing their feet and you know it's not like they were wearing air jordans or nikes back then they were either barefoot or wearing sandals i don't even want to know how bad their feet were looking i know it's not a good image to preach about either way jesus did not hesitate to do the lowest thing to set an example for each and every single one of us so what are you willing to do for your neighbor what are you willing to do in an act of service especially to help them get to heaven obviously the washing of the feet would be an analogy today the gospel continues he says this i give you a new commandment love one another as i have loved you well how much has jesus loved us oh infinitely inexhaustibly with no boundaries to the point of literally dying on the cross for each and every single one of us and guess what this is a commandment this isn't an option i give you a new option love one another as i have loved you he didn't say that he said i give you a new commandment but yet whenever god commands us to do something he will give us the corresponding grace and strength to do so so in other words we are willing we should be willing to even die for our neighbors because he's commanding us to love one another as he has loved us he completes the old testament the commandments which is summed up love god with your whole heart mind and soul and then love your neighbor as yourself now he he again he fulfills it now love one another as i have loved you in another part of the gospel he's very clear you will do greater things than i have done so again we sell ourselves short christ is in us in the eucharist the holy trinity dwells within our souls by sanctifying grace god willing we will be docile we will say yes lord whatever it is that you want me to do i am willing to do it for you and for my brothers and sisters so this charity this love is what we will be judged on in other words when we die and we see god we see jesus face to face as the judge and the savior he will say did you love me with your whole heart mind and soul did you love your neighbor as i have loved you saint john of the cross carmelite doctor of the church at the noon time of life we will be judged on our love just to make it easier saint therese of the sue another carmelite doctor my vocation is love this is very simple love so we will be judged on our love the biggest misfortune in our lives especially as catholics is not pain it's not suffering it's not a loss of job whatever it may be the biggest misfortune in life is a lack of love lack of love toward god and lack of love toward our neighbor so we need to realize that if the devil wants to tempt us especially in not becoming saints he'll distort the word of love and charity which he's been doing unfortunately a good job because people are falling for his temptations what does true love mean we need to realize this when jesus says love one another as i have loved you love is willing the best for another it's wanting the greatest good for your neighbor what is the greatest good for your neighbor heaven helping them get to heaven is showing true love to your neighbor that is why it is not love certainly is not mercy to affirm people in their sins especially by silence so you know at times i counsel young adults maybe teenagers maybe they're in high school then they fall in love they're in love they just met two weeks ago and they're already planning to get married okay okay so they say at times someone may ask me father how far can we go you know in terms of being active sexually active with one another that's the wrong question first and foremost to ask but if you're leading each other into sin i can tell you objectively speaking you don't love one another okay because it is never loved to lead someone else into sin so jesus commands us to love one another as he has loved us that is helping them get to heaven doing whatever it takes for them to grow in grace and virtue so this love is expressed in service that's the whole reason why jesus especially wash his disciples feet are you willing to serve our lord out of love now if you think about it jesus is the king of kings and lord of lords how did he show his love in an act of service you know our lord could have in his humanity reigned from a huge palace i mean he deserves the best something bigger than the taj mahal he could have a huge throne to reign from but what does he choose instead of a huge throne a wooden cross that he's nailed to that is his throne he reigns from this wooden instrument called the tree of life what is the crown that he chooses as king again people should be serving him instead of a golden crown with jewels and diamonds and anything else that's very expensive a crown of thorns this is his act of service in love what does he choose instead of a rod or a staff of authority he could have us at our beck and call we could be crawling to him like ants we can be feeding him with grapes or whatever as the king of king and lord of lords but what does he choose he choose to have a pierced heart so people aren't in any way going to be too much in awe of his glory and wonder in other words his vulnerability for us to especially praise him in his humility i mean he came to us as a baby in bethlehem if we're scared of a baby then we're there's something wrong with us and now where does he reign currently from a monstrance where does he reign especially for us priests we should be very grateful and thankful every time we say the words of consecration over bread and wine he reigns in our hands this is how the king of kings shows his love in an act of service so we have no excuse we have no excuse if god is for us and who can be against us whether we are loving god with our whole heart mind and soul and loving our neighbor as he has loved us is something we should examine our conscience and pray for every single day what i've been talking about is this universal call to holiness a universal call to become saints the fact that you were baptized you are called to become a saint now if i may i didn't realize this if someone told me this growing up i just probably ignored it i don't think it's necessarily a subject that's preached a lot maybe you have it here but that's the reality of the situation we are called to become saints there's a vocation that's what vocation means to call and to tell you the truth it was only until i was in college i realized that i had a calling you know growing up growing up in southern california i thought my calling was to do anything exciting i'm going to tell you right now just as a confession i thought church was the most boring thing you know you see these kids are going through catechism class they're going to go write down their homework for ccd and things like that they say well mom dad this is boring i get nothing out of it i was one of those kids you know all i wanted to do was play video games it was only until i was in middle school i had my first calling now when we're talking about calling there's obviously a divine calling within a vocation such as the priesthood religious life and marriage if you're called to celibacy for the sake of the kingdom or virginity for the sake of the kingdom that is also a valid call now we also have a professional calling such as you know being a doctor or a lawyer and so forth which could obviously change or even a mother living at home which would be obviously a professional calling so i remember my my calling i remember i was in middle school and i finally felt like a purpose in terms of doing something a vocation it was when i was in sixth grade i was at recess and i saw a lot of students circling up in the grass on the grass there and i saw something that again changed my life i know this may sound odd but i saw the students break dancing they were spinning on their head they were doing flips they were very popular not only that it seemed like the girls really liked them so i thought wow i have to join their group there's no fun like this at church this is my vocation this is my calling so i went home instead of doing my homework i moved the coffee table in the living room i played the music loudly and i started to practice and i got really good at it so i joined this group sfa sent from above that's what we called ourselves and i would go from dance to dance house party to house party and club to club when i was in sixth and seventh grade break dancing now the reason i was able to go out late at night because most of us had older brothers in high school which who also break dance so we were all one big crew and my mom said john look out after your younger brother and he can go with you to all these places so i got really good and again this was my vocation to live an exciting life i didn't really have this opportunity at church it's not like father was break dancing you know he was just doing his thing here on the altar and preaching so i got pretty good at it and i would go from place to place and i got a little cocky and i said you know what i'm break dancing in front of maybe a hundred 200 people it's my vocation to break dance in front of like 500 people that's like the equivalent of being on uh you know america's got talent or something like that so one day we go to amusement in amusement park six flags magic mountain in southern california and there's like maybe 50 of us or something like that and we go to the rides and a couple of guys tap us on the shoulders and they say hey do you break dance are you b-boys that's the term we use we're just like yes of course we dress a specific way they're just like how could you not notice this and uh they said do you want to battle do you want to compete and we said of course they say okay let's meet by batman the ride it was z force then it's now batman at seven o'clock okay great so here we are we're about to battle but we have the whole day to get ready now we have to wait in line for the roller coaster it takes like a whole hour but the ride lasts only for like two minutes so here we are trying to strategize who's gonna go first who's gonna go middle in who's gonna go last now out of all humility i was the best one okay so so i was gonna go last so we battle versus them the booyah try from oxnard california i'll never forget that so they serve us they go first and then we continue now breakdancing it's it's an amusing thing to watch so the circle got bigger and maybe in the back of my mind i was thinking i might finally get my chance to break dance in front of 500 people so their last guy comes in before i would maybe do a set of moves that i practice he's only about a year older than me he does two or three flips he does flares to windmills if you know the moves maybe he wanted to impress everyone watching he started to do a certain move where he was break dancing on his forehead but we were break dancing on concrete so unfortunately he he cut his face his forehead and blood started gushing from what i remember over his face and on the ground the workers saw it and they obviously didn't want anyone to get hurt so they completely just dismantled the circle of people and i was looking and everyone turned around and i never got my vocation fulfilled because everyone left maybe god was trying to tell me something when i was trying to break dance in front of 500 people okay there goes my exciting life all right i go to high school go to high school and instead of break dancing in front of 500 people i'm like okay well that didn't happen but why don't we do this i got involved in sports my older brother loved basketball he taught me my younger brother how to play basketball and i got really good at it so i thought to myself why don't i just score 50 points in a game if i can do that that's the most exciting thing and i could pretty much die happily they'll think i'm a legend okay so i practice i get really good and so forth i can dump really easily actually and uh i would score maybe 43 points you know in the 40s and so forth i remember one half i scored uh 32 obviously more than 25 which is half of 50 but then i only ended up with 47. i'm thinking what what's what's going on with my vocation here of living an exciting life so that didn't come true either last but not least i go to college i'm at a university and i'm thinking i didn't break dents in front of 500 people i didn't score 50 points in a game now my goal in my vocation in life as a 17 or 18 year old college student is to simply be a billionaire okay okay okay thanks for giggling okay so the reason why i say that is because there are people like bill gates or like like the founder of facebook we're talking about billionaires here i don't think any i think some of them didn't even go to college so i was thinking why don't i just do what they did and i can retire when i'm 18. and i'll have my money work for me that's the most exciting life i can live so i started to do like computers because that's what back then that's what especially a lot of people were doing networking system administration and so forth i had my own business at home so i was making money with computers and also i got hired at nasa at the jet propulsion laboratory in pasadena california where the rose bowl is and the parade so okay i was making good money obviously i wasn't a billionaire but i was hoping to get to that point so all of this was happening i was only probably 18 years old so i was like well i'm 18 i have this money so it's california they've got nice beaches there too maybe not as good as florida but still go orange county laguna beach and so forth and so on so i started to spend all my money i bought a nice car i had a nice car and you know buying things i remember watching a movie there was this character in a superhero movie his his power was to shoot a beam to beat the bad guys but he had to wear special sunglasses their oakley juliet ruby red special edition glasses so how can i go to laguna beach without those glasses don't worry those are 400 so you buy them and you sport them and you try to show off but if you keep going to the beach which i did uh the red the ruby red gets old gets played out so i got the green green plasma the blue ice the fires and the black iridium but don't worry those were only three hundred dollars so all of this was happening this is when i was 18 years old and i was supposedly living my vocation of an exciting life i didn't want to do anything boring such as church so all this happened for about a year and yet there was a void in emptiness in my soul oh saint augustine says oh lord you made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they rest in you so my guess someone was probably praying for me while i was doing all these things if i were to guess it was my mom okay so i remember on the weekend instead of going out to a club or a party i remember passing by a church passing through and it was a church dedicated to saint joseph and i wanted to say a prayer obviously catholic all my life but living this very sinful life there was a void that's what that's what sin does so i park my car i head toward the church and there's a sign that says peace obviously peace is what i wanted since there was an emptiness but it was an acronym for perpetual eucharistic adoration chapel entrance so i go in to the chapel and i obviously see people praying some of them are lying on the floor praying some are crying everyone is praying and of course i look toward the middle and what do i see exactly what we see on the altar jesus in the most blessed sacrament they had a huge sacred host this big host that obviously is very visible even when you walk in so you know i started to pray and so forth i knew about the blessed sacrament i knew about the eucharist but it's not like i was entirely devoted to our lord and at that point something happened the holy spirit in my estimation came down upon me and i knew that jesus was right in front of me and our lord started to talk to me and i couldn't necessarily hear him with my ears but it was a deep voice in my heart and i didn't know exactly what he was saying but i knew that he was trying to communicate something to me so i was there for maybe an hour but it seemed like it was five minutes and there was a certain sense of peace and joy that i never felt practically my whole life until i actually was in front of jesus and his real presence in the eucharist and it was late i don't know at that point maybe it was already past midnight and i was there in that chapel so you know i i left that chapel you go to work you go to school nothing's the same anymore you could you can go out to clubs you can get whatever you want you can buy this and by that nothing's going to compare to a divine person jesus christ being united with him so i had a huge reversion if you want to call it a conversion since i was so bad i wasn't living a catholic faith i wasn't living a moral life i probably would have went to hell if i died in that state so instead of going out i went back to that chapel because it was open 24 hours a day seven days a week and i started to read the bible i started to do lectio divina be more devoted to the blessed virgin mary and i remember telling jesus in the blessed sacrament i said lord what is what is it that you want me to do usually when you have a reversion you usually help out at church because that's where god is so you know teaching rcia or helping sponsor rcia candidates teaching confirmation so forth and so on but i said what else do you want me to do you know you have this act of surrender so i remember saying something like this to jesus if you want me to go to india with saint mother with mother teresa and feed the poorest of the poor i'm like the most materialistic person it'll be very difficult for me to do it but i'm willing to do it if you want me to do it if it's your will and i remember saying something like this if you want me jesus to marry someone i'm not even physically attracted to and have like 10 children that would be like the most difficult thing ever but if you really want me to do it i'll do it so when you say something like that you're pretty much all in so eventually i obviously joined uh the seminary i joined first the diocesan priesthood later was called to the father's mercy diocese in seminary later called to the fathers of mercy and to this day since my time in adoration i have never looked back and i could tell you truthfully this is the most exciting life that i have ever lived even all of those things that i experienced as an early or late teenager in my early 20s nothing can compare to serving god in an act of love toward our neighbors so that's my vocation story yet after i took my first vows or second vows i remember going back to my home parish in california with my younger brother now father jewel and we had a big family vocation day like a conference at our church and our old confirmation students that we taught they were break dancers and so we decided to battle them just for a little entertainment at our church so i remember making the announcement saying if anyone wants to watch us break dance versus our old confirmation students the floor dorks that's what they call themselves we'll be in the grass area after lunch so we eat a quick lunch we put linoleum on the grass we play the music loudly and we battle versus them now there was a set of moves that i always wanted to do like in six flags magic mountain versus that one crew and before i did this move i look around and what do i see about 500 people so i'm thinking how is it that the one place i was trying to avoid that is that i didn't think was exciting and that was boring my vocation finally comes true at church does god have a sense of humor and then i go to a seminary in connecticut holy apostles seminary college and seminary it's a seminary dedicated mainly to second career vocations or if someone if they never got married and they got called to the priesthood later in life they were sent there it was a good solid catholic orthodox seminary so the fathers of mercy sent even the younger seminarians there so i was sent there the average age when we started that is my brother and i when we started there 63 the average age some were higher some were lower but average age 63. so it was kind of boring there and um so the director said brother joseph why don't you try to excite things here why don't you get a sporting event there's a religious order down the road there the legionaries of christ contact them and see if they want to do something in terms of sports so i called the rector there and he was excited to hear he said let's play soccer and i was like no we can't play soccer he said well we have a basketball gymnasium here why don't we play basketball now i tell father mosey erector okay they want to play basketball he said okay get your five you know five on five i'm thinking we need more like 12 for subs based on the age of this seminary so i'm here and i don't want to sound uncharitable i'm going up to people during meals and asking them if they want to play on our team i'm thinking do you run do you do do you do anything active okay so it's just so we got our team some of them were in their 40s so i don't want you to think someone someone was i think was 70 72 or something like that okay so we were we played versus the legion now they had a 150 seminarians at their house the average age 19. not only that practically it would seem like on a daily basis part of their formation was physical education okay so if you go ask anyone in rome how the legion plays sports you know at times you got to watch out someone could get really hurt someone could may even die based on some of the age range of the seminary so we play versus the legion we play multiple games one game our whole team gets hot it's a miracle we can score anywhere at any time of this basketball game the bell rings to end the game and i look at the score board and we beat the legion of christ by 43 points and uh you know the headlines the maybe the headlines for the newspaper of the seminary holy fossils beat the legionaries of christ it was a miracle and then i was given the scorecard and it said brother joseph 53 points all of that time i spent as a teenager in high school with my vocation of trying to score 50 points finally became true when i was at the seminary with older people so again does god have a sense of humor now as you can see there's a pattern here my last vocation i thought was to be a billionaire obviously that didn't happen i took a vow of poverty now i mean my allowance is a hundred dollars a month okay okay well in reality i'm a priest can you put a certain amount of money for the gift to be able to change bread and wine into the body blood soul and divinity of jesus christ absolutely not i hear confessions i absolve people from their sins especially mortal sin one human soul is worth more than the whole created universe so my vocation to live as a billionaire obviously came true in a different manner as a priest and as a religious but god granted these things i know because i wanted to live this exciting life at times he'll grant it to us if we do his will if we say yes to his plan that is to become a saint so god has many things in store for each and every single one of you you know god willing after you die and you see him face to face he'll ask you how many people did you get to help get to heaven god willing there will be myriads amounts of people that got to heaven because of you because of your fidelity because of your obedience your reparation for their sins simple question we can ask ourselves what's keeping you from being a better or the best catholic that you can be is it human respect you know a lot of catholics especially the young ones they're too worried about what other people will say if they pray the daily rosary if they go to weekly adoration if they stand up for the teachings of morality within the church who cares what other people say do what god wants you to do even if you get persecuted god will give you the grace to persevere he won't necessarily take away your cross he will give you the strength to bear it happily and patiently toward calvary so you can rise with him especially during easter is it you're lazy you're slothful you know i heard one time a man came up to me and said father my wife goes to church for me no you can't do that get off your behind and go to mass okay some people was the materialism whatever it may be it could just simply be your pride some people just don't want to give up pleasures pleasures of the senses they just want to live as if this world we're living in this world forever lord have mercy may we have the humility especially to surrender everything to our lord for that grace to answer our call to become saints may we perpetually know and live the love that took christ to the cross glory be to the father and to the son and to the holy spirit as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be world without and amen mary queen of all saints pray for us in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit you will now have the right of benediction i will be hearing confessions after benediction tomorrow is the last day i put envelopes if you want to donate to our community fathers of mercy is what you would write your check if you were to give a check so feel free to use these envelopes we'll collect them tomorrow if you want to put them in the baskets if you can't come tomorrow any anything would be greatly appreciated now we have a devotion or a novena to saint joseph so his his feast day is coming up and we put a box right under beside the altar in our main chapel at the fathers of mercy write your petitions either on the envelope or on a separate piece of paper and put it in the envelope and i will put your petitions in that box where we offer mass and we pray for we'll pray for nine days obviously to saint joseph we actually we actually also have a box in our chapel for prayers throughout the whole year i could also put it there if you want but mainly i'm going to put it for st joseph since his feast day is coming up so if you have any special intentions maybe someone in your family that needs some prayers feel free to write it down directly on the envelope or put another piece of paper with your donation inside of it there are more books but we're running out if you haven't had a book there there's some there or probably maybe sell out tonight so you might want to get one if you haven't had one already and i finally got i finally found and printed out the set for this mission to serve as terrain it's where jesus is washing saint peter's feet so if you want a copy or any other copies of the cds they're there for pre-order on the table so thank you i thank the volunteers also for helping me out and then of course there's the indulgence especially for tomorrow the sheet to explain what you need to do to receive this indulgence again i'll be hearing confessions if you don't want to stay now this is this is the longest morning session from mass the rosary until the talk so i realized that some people just need to stretch out i will be hearing confessions at 4 30 this afternoon for the next two days until seven o'clock obviously that's when i start preaching for the evening session so feel free to come in at any time at 4 30 and i will be in that confessional if you want to take advantage of going to confession at that time so i will pray for all of you if you can pray for me as we continue this mission enduring lent father is helping me out here at the rectory just in case you're wondering i am offering mass i have my own intentions here in the rectory as well i do preach and try to help out but i also am offering mass in the rectory so i'm trying to pray for all of you there throughout the week so if you can just give me a few minutes and then i'll put on the cope and we'll have the right of benediction oh by the way i mentioned to the last night and i i mentioned this a little bit if you want to go to confession if you can just do a few things for me please don't confess other people's sins okay especially if you're married there's no reason why you should confess your spouse's sins okay usually there's we there's like a long list of things my husband or my wife did this this and this therefore i did this as if they were as if they were the ones to blame for your sin okay so so just just stick with your own sins also i don't need a story of why you committed a certain sin you don't have to say oh father i was at the mall i was while i was eating a pretzel there was this woman that was wearing red and i had a lustful thought you don't have to say that you can just say that you had a lustful thought okay also i know this may sound odd i don't need to know how good you are okay someone say oh father i i'm in the knights of columbus i volunteer for ccd and i do this and i do i'm happy for you but for confession just say your sins you don't have to say how good you are also if you confess mortal sins try to say the amount of times you've committed it since your last confession or guess the best amount also when you're done please don't just pause in silence because i don't know whether you're thinking of what to say or if you're done and i don't want to have to say okay are you done do you have more so it's like i'm trying to pry it out of you are you trying to keep something away from me so when you're done with your confession you can just say and for any other sin i can't remember okay great now i know we can just move on i can give you the penance and then absolution so if you can do that i'm sure you're doing a great job some of you if not i'll correct you during during the confession itself so just give me a few minutes and we'll have the right of benediction feel free to have our personal adoration here before the right you

Channel: Corpus Christi Catholic Church

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Id: Jp3OfUeQVzQ

Length: 64min 19sec (3859 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 03 2021