Father Dom's Homs: 2nd Sun of Easter

James Caldwell: This is the Manly Catholic, the podcast that calls you out of the shadows and into the fight. Here we forge men into warriors for Christ, husbands, fathers and leaders who refuse to kneel to the modern world's lies. No more passivity, no more excuses, no more lukewarm faith. This is your battle cry, your call to arms. The time for weakness is over. It's time to fight. Welcome to the Manly Catholic. Let's get to work. In name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Today we celebrate the second Sunday of Easter. And we all know that when we celebrated Easter Sunday, we entered into what's called the Octave of Easter. So the next eight days, every day was an Easter Sunday celebration. And so it is today, this Sunday, we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. So we're still in Easter. So we can still say Christ is risen, hallelujah, hallelujah. So happy. Easter, once again, everybody. As we look at our readings today, and also what we celebrate, Divine Mercy Sunday today, we see that God's mercy is poured forth upon us through our readings. We see all the sacraments, we see the church, we see God's mercy being poured forth over us. So again, that's why the church puts Divine Mercy Sunday in front of us as well. So here in this church at three o'clock, there will be the Divine Mercy Chaplet prayed. And if you're seeking the plenary indulgence that the church offers us, you may do so here at that time. It's a great gift on Divine Mercy Sunday. We receive a plenary indulgence along with all the other prescribed things that you have to do with it, of course. But when you fulfill that at the three o'clock hour here, which is Divine Mercy hour, the hour that Christ died on Good Friday, you're washed clean. Vennial sin is wiped away, mortal sin is wiped away, temporal punishment due to sin is wiped away. It's as if you're coming forth out of the baptismal waters once again. God's mercy and his love for us. Praise be Jesus Christ now and forever. And so as we look at our readings today, we can echo the great words of the deep theologians and sacred authors of scripture and those who studied it throughout 2,000 years and echo the words that say, There's gold in them there hills. Joking, they didn't say that. Something along those lines. But no, seriously, the readings that the church puts before us during Easter, especially Acts of the Apostles, there is gold in them there hills. So let's grab our shovel, let's put our mining hat on with the lamp, let's dive in. Let's just take a look at the readings that I put forth before us. And I really do hope over these past eight days that you have been going over and reading. and letting sacred scripture wash over you every day, the daily mass readings. Because the church puts Acts of the Apostles before us. If you want to know what it means to be a Catholic in today's world, if you want to know what that looks like, if you want to know how to act, read Luke, the Gospel of Luke, and then right after that, go Acts of the Apostles. Luke wrote that as one volume. The church split it. This is the gospel of Luke and then this is Acts to the Apostles. So if you want to know how to act and behave as a Catholic in this world, please do that because there's gold and then there are hills. So let's look at our first reading today. Again, from Acts to the Apostles. But we're a few chapters in from that great book that Luke wrote. When you read the first four chapters of Acts to the Apostles, you can see the power or the dynamite of the resurrection. People are being electrified by the life of Christ now living in them because they receive the fullness of the spirit in their sacraments, especially the apostles. And you see Peter and John boldly proclaiming publicly, because our Catholic faith is not only private, but very much public, they're proclaiming Christ resurrected and they're healing people. And so the leaders of the Israelite community in the upper hierarchy, they're thinking to themselves, We killed Jesus, the miracle worker. And so all of that should have gone with him. But then you have his apostles doing the exact same thing Jesus did when he was alive. It's like, what is going on here? And Peter and John are boldly proclaiming, even though they're being persecuted, because they're called forth before this hand-hander multiple times. First, they're giving a stern warning. Second, they're reprimanded. Third, they're flogged. Do you know what they say after they're flogged? Praise the Lord Jesus Christ that we get to suffer for his name. And then the world is like, man, you're crazy. That's the last thing we should do is suffer, but suffering for Christ is a great gift. And we're called to do that because we have the power of the risen Lord within us. And so the apostles show us how to do that with courage and bravery. We do it with love and patience and peace, conviction, courage, strength of the Holy Spirit through the sacraments. We're called to bring the light of Christ to the world. whatever vocation that God has called us to and the talents and charisms that he has given us. Some of us aren't very vocal with our faith, praying fast. Some of us are vocal. Some can go door to door. Hey, let me talk to you about the Catholic faith. And so we're all called to do that in some way, or form and the Holy Spirit will help you doing that. And so we see in our first reading today. The people of our Lord are listening and obeying the teachings of the apostles, devoted to communal life, prayer, and breaking of the bread. So again, Acts the Apostles, there's a lot of code language in there that shows us all the Catholic sacraments and how to be Catholic. So what is the teachings of the apostles? Well, we know that the apostles are our first bishops. We saw that in Holy Thursday when... In scripture, we hear Jesus washing the feet of the 12 apostles. That is an ordination right to the high priesthood in the Jewish temple. So they know that they were being ordained priests, but to what temple? We know later it's that temple in the Catholic church. So the apostles carry on Jesus's authority. He breathed on them the Holy Spirit and gave them authority and power. And the first bishops are apostles now are ordaining priests. And so everybody is gathering. and they're listening to the teachings of the apostles, dogma and doctrine, faith, morals, how to live a good life, how to get to heaven, salvation, the teaching of the apostles, God's commandments and laws and statutes and decrees. Then they're devoted to communal life. Communal life is baptism which brings us into the body of Christ, the mystical body of Christ. That is communal life. And they come together, like we're doing here, to break bread. and to pray. We hear later that they would meet in the temple and then they would go and break bread in their homes, eating their meals with exaltation, joy, and sincerity of heart. Well, what's going on here? Well, at the beginning of Christianity, the Jews, The Israelite hierarchy in the temple, didn't recognize exactly who they were yet. They thought they were still Jews. So what they would do, because most of the Christians at that time were former Jews, they would go to the temple. They would go to the synagogue. And then they would listen to the Old Testament readings, just like we do here at Mass. Mass is broken up into two parts, liturgy of the word and the liturgy of the breaking of the bread, or the liturgy of the most holy Eucharist. So the first part of the mass, they would go to the temple, they would go to the synagogues, and the rabbis would wash over them Old Testament readings. And then they knew they had to continue what the apostles and the priests were doing and what Jesus handed on to them, the Last Supper, the Eucharist, the mass. They would go to their homes for the breaking of the bread. They would celebrate the second part of the mass, the Eucharist, because they couldn't do that in the temple. Later on, as Christianity started to grow, a name was attached to them by the Jewish authority. They were called the People of the Way. Because when they would convert people, they said, you have to walk the way of Christ. So they were the people of the way. Later when Greek language was introduced into Christianity, they were called little Christs, little Christs. So the hierarchy of the Israelite authority began to identify them as a dangerous sect. Then they were kicked out of the synagogues. They could not go to the temple. And then that's when the mass was united in their homes. They had the liturgy of the word and then they had the liturgy of the Eucharist. and they would go and take a priest to their homes and they would celebrate in small communities everywhere under the guidance of the apostle, the bishop, the mages, and baptism, and reconciliation, and confirmation, and marriage, and funeralites, and the anointing of the sick. Beautiful. And this is all an acts of the apostles. So as all of you begin reading Acts of the Apostles, kind of play a game with each other. See if you can find the sacrament of baptism and confirmation and reconciliation. They're all there. See if you can find that. So again, our first reading from Acts to the Apostles is absolutely powerful. So when they ate the Eucharist in their homes, they were filled with exaltation, sincerity, and heart. They were full of joy. Are we full of joy when we receive the Eucharist? Another thing that the church puts before us during this great time are writings from our very first pope, Pope St. Peter. Peter's preaching fire. Everywhere he goes, it's evangelization, it's apologetics. He's defending the faith in front of the St. Hadrian. What courage, what bravery. And this is Peter who denied Jesus when we read the passion. And now since he has a fullness of Christ and he has the sacraments and the power of his bishopric, the episcopacy, he's filled with strength and he does not deny Jesus at all. He proclaims them. He'll go before the Jews and bring forth salvation history starting with Moses and Abraham and Isaac and David and Jesus and the resurrection of our Lord. Even in the midst of being flogged and persecuted and put in jail. and the angel releases them and they go back to the temple area preaching. See, they go to the temple, they go to the synagogues proclaiming, what strength. So we can learn from him, what does he say? He says this in our second reading, in this you rejoice, the resurrection, in this you rejoice. Although now for a little while, he's talking to us still, you may have to suffer through various trials so that the genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold, your faith is more precious than anything this world can offer. that is perishable even though tested by fire may prove to be for praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Our faith is so important and Peter is reminding us, yes, when you proclaim Jesus Christ in any way, shape, form, you may be persecuted, but when you are and you suffer, give thanks to the Lord for allowing him to love you so much and enter into his passion that redeems the world and you participate in a saving act. It is a gift. to suffer, that's hard to understand. But Peter is saying, give thanks to the Lord for suffering, little ways or big ways. I remember when I came into my Christian faith at about 28 years old and was working as kind of like an iron worker and also a project manager on sometimes huge job sites, hundreds and hundreds of other workers and iron workers, huge job sites. And someone would ask me like on Mondays, like, hey man, what'd you do this weekend? I went to church. What? Yeah, I went to Mass. Mass, what's that? There's the opening. And so I talked about the Mass. When people would ask me, I wouldn't beat everyone over the head with the Bible or anything. And so some people, tongue in cheek, but serious too. Like I'd walk by and some of them would be like, there's that Jesus freak. Like that's a compliment. Yes, I am a Jesus freak. God loves you. The is, once I had Christ, like Jeremiah, the prophecy of the Lord in scripture was like burning oil in my bones. I couldn't contain it. I had to let it out and I loved talking about it. And if persecution came with it, as hard as it was, it was a great gift and I thank the Lord for that. Faith, faith is necessary. It's so important. We can see Thou pouring of the graces of the Holy Spirit in our gospel upon those who are there, especially Thomas, that increased his faith. There's so much that could be said in our gospel. I just want to end with this. So there's a piece in there, two pieces about confession in the Eucharist. The first is confession. Jesus appears to them. He says, peace be with you, because it's a supernatural event. They're scared. Jesus risen. in his glorified body with all his wounds standing before them, amazed, defying the laws of physics, crushing the laws of physics. He says, peace be with you. When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. He showed them his wounds, his victories of trophy, his trophy victories. His resurrected body didn't get rid of them. He wants to show people his wounds. And we know from the shroud of Turin, the linen garment that was wrapped around the body of Jesus when they took him down from the cross at three o'clock on Friday. Saturday's the Passover. They had to quit, get him in the tomb. Otherwise they'd be defiled and they couldn't worship on the Passover. So they couldn't clean the body. So they wrapped the body, blood, sweat, mud, tears, everything up and laid it in the tomb. laid it in the tomb. We also know through science, because the shroud has been researched by thousands and thousands of scientists. It's the most researched artifact in the world. And what they find is that the image of Christ top and bottom is burned into the outermost layers of the fabric of that linen on the inside. And what they speculate, the only way it would have worked is at one point, the dead body of Jesus hovered, levitated. And then with 30 trillion watts of ultraviolet light energy bursted for 1 40 billionth of a second left that image burned. And when you look at that and you study the blood, it's the same blood, the exact same blood they find in all the Eucharistic miracles. What an amazing thing. They also discovered that there was over 700 self-inflicted wounds, not self-inflicted wounds upon himself by the scourgers. 700. but they couldn't identify the wounds on his side. So there could have been over a thousand wounds. He lost over a third of his blood just in the scourging. And so when he presented himself to his apostles, it was all his wounds. It's like, this is how much I love you. What else do I need to do to prove my love for you? So he said, Jesus said to them again, peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, I send you. And when he said this, he breathed on them the Holy Spirit. And here's confession. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, whose sins you retain are retained. And that very same gift through Jesus happens in these confessionals here. What a gift. Finally, we see the Eucharist. Thomas doubting the Eucharist, doubting Jesus. had to touch him, put his hand into his flesh. Jesus allowed that. In fact, took his hand and said, here, put it here. Then Thomas said after that, my Lord and my God, I believe. It'd be not awesome to touch Jesus like he did, but we have the Eucharist. And we get to receive him body, blood, soul, and divinity into our very bodies, souls, and minds. So as we receive the Eucharist today, let us give thanks for the faith. Let us give thanks for the sacraments and the resurrection. But most of all, let us echo those same words as, Thomas did when we receive our Lord. We do more than touch him. We consume him. Let us say my Lord and my God. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Brothers, thank you for listening, but do not let this end here. this episode stirred something inside of you, do not keep it to yourself. Share it with a brother who needs to hear it, a man who is tired, a man who's drifting, a man who's under attack and does not even know it. This podcast exists because the battle is real and souls are at stake. If this work has helped you, please support the channel so we can keep fighting. Your support will help ignite the mission to keep us going. We need your help, brothers. I know you will come through for us. Pray for us because we need it as well. The enemy does not rest and neither can we. Now go and live this. Be a saint, not tomorrow, but today. Choose the hard thing, reject sin, get back up. Go to confession, pray your rosary, love your family, and carry your cross without