Mike Landry: Catholic speaker, writer, & music minister in Alberta, Canada HomepageMike Landry: Catholic speaker, writer, & music minister in Alberta, Canada

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The Carrot & the Stick: Homily for August 7, 2016

Photo Credit: By Neoclassical_Velocity.JPG: Unitfreak Carrot.svg: Nevit Dilmen (talk) Stick.svg: Nevit Dilmen (talk) derivative work: Nevit Dilmen (Neoclassical_Velocity.JPG Carrot.svg Stick.svg) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Photo Credit: Nevit Dilman via Wikimedia Commons [CC BY-SA 3.0]  

Below is the written text for Deacon Pat Hessel’s homily at Holy Trinity Parish on the weekend of August 6-7, 2016 – on our motivation for living our life of faith.

Some people speak about reward and punishment in terms of “the carrot and the stick.”  They talk about it in relation to motivating people.  It comes from the image of a person sitting on a cart pulled by a mule.  The driver dangles a carrot in front of the mule.  The mule wants the carrot, so it moves forward.  But the driver also holds a stick, and if the mule stops or doesn’t move fast enough, the driver hits the mule with the stick.  In the business world, carrots and sticks are used all the time to encourage productivity.  The top salesperson might get a special bonus at the end of the month – a carrot.  On the other hand, the worker who doesn’t perform well or who misses work often, risks being fired – a stick.

Many of us view our faith life in terms of carrots and sticks.  Our ultimate carrot is, of course, heaven, and our ultimate stick is hell.  Carrots and sticks sound manipulative, but they work.  “If you get your homework done before supper, you can have ice cream for dessert.”  “If you don’t do your chores, you’re going to lose your telephone for two days.”  All of us as parents have used carrots and sticks with our kids.  They work – most of the time. [Read more…] about The Carrot & the Stick: Homily for August 7, 2016

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God gives us more than we can handle

Photo Credit: CollegeDegrees360 on Flickr (Creative Commons)
Photo Credit: CollegeDegrees360 on Flickr (Creative Commons)

I came across a quote a number of years ago that is often (erroneously) attributed to Mother Teresa: “I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much.”  I’ve used it in the past when I’ve presented or answered questions on suffering – largely because it’s a comforting quote.

Everyone suffers, so the problem of pain is one of the most obvious impediments to faith in God.  The above quote (whoever said it) emphasizes not only God’s nearness to us in our suffering, but also a belief that God only tries us to our limits and no further.  And it would seem that this understanding of suffering is strongly supported in the writings of St. Paul:

“We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For while we live we are always being given up to death for Jesus ‘sake, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh.” -2 Corinthians 4:8-11

The only trouble here is that I’m not convinced that it’s actually true that God only tries us to our limits…  and I don’t believe that this is what St. Paul meant, either. [Read more…] about God gives us more than we can handle

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Is it HARD to get to Heaven?

Photo Credit: Erika (Creative Commons)
Photo Credit: Erika Szostak on Flickr  (Creative Commons)

On the night our parish youth group kicked off a semester of youth ministry programming on the Church, our guest speaker took questions from teens.  One of them went like this: “You mentioned that it’s hard to get to Heaven.  Do you really mean ‘really hard?”

A better word than ‘hard’ in this case might be ‘impossible.’  It is impossible for any of us on our earn merit to get to Heaven.  This is why Jesus had to come.  The Old Testament tells the story of the people of God who, after being created by God to love broke their relationship with Him (by sinning), and were never able to properly reconcile that relationship.  God tries over and over again, covenant by covenant (think Abraham, Isaac, Moses, David…) but humanity is never able to uphold their end of the bargain. [Read more…] about Is it HARD to get to Heaven?

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The Last Four Things

"Fra Angelico 009" by Fra Angelico (circa 1395–1455) - The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202. Distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH.. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fra_Angelico_009.jpg#/media/File:Fra_Angelico_009.jpg
“The Last Judgment” by Fra Angelico (Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons) 

Let’s get the bad news out of the way right off the bat: we’re all going to die.  While we may not think about it very often, death is inevitable.  It often takes a personal brush with death or the illness or loss of a loved one to make us even consider our own mortality.  Whether you fear it or would be willing to face it with courage, you can’t avoid death.  When Christians talk about death, we are speaking of the end of our earthly lives… the moment where an individual’s soul separates from his or her body (which will decay while awaiting resurrection at Jesus’ return.)

But if we all die, what happens next?  In Catholic tradition, death is the first of the “last four things” – death, judgment, Heaven, and Hell.   [Read more…] about The Last Four Things

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Unfolding Scripture: Mark 10

Photo Credit: Jeff Belmonte (Creative Commons)
Photo Credit: Jeff Belmonte (Creative Commons)

 

The first section of Mark 10 (1-12) contains some of Jesus’ most explicit thought on marriage.  He is initially challenged by the Pharisees to explain why Moses allowed divorce while Jesus speaks of the permanence of marriage.  Jesus responds first by identifying humanity’s “hardness of heart” (Mark 10:5) as the excuse for Moses’ provision for divorce.  Then, He points them back to the beginning (Genesis 1-2), where the man and woman were designed to become one and not be split apart (cf Mark 10:6-9) as God’s design for marriage. [Read more…] about Unfolding Scripture: Mark 10