All Activity

The Christian faith has never allowed us to imagine that freedom alone is enough. Freedom is not an end in itself. The question before us is always: freedom for what? And it is precisely there that Jesus enters the conversation. “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest,” he reassures his followers in our Gospel story for today. Notice what Jesus does not say. He does not promise victory. He does not promise wealth. He does not promise national greatness. He does not promise that our side will win. He promises rest. And perhaps that sounds almost disappointingly small—until we stop and consider how many people are weary. How many people are carrying burdens! People burdened by grief, by illness, by loneliness, by economic uncertainty, by fear about the future, by the relentless anger and division that seem to define so much of public life. Jesus’s vision of a healthy society looks very different from the measurements we often use. We tend to measure success through wealth, power, military strength, economic growth, influence. Jesus poses a different question: Are the weary finding rest? Are burdens being lifted? Are people being treated with gentleness? And then Jesus names something even more surprising: “Learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart.” This is the turning point. The highest value is not power as we usually define it. Not strength as domination. Jesus paints a different kind of life entirely. Gentleness and humility are not traits we often celebrate in public life today. We admire strength. We admire confidence. We admire winning. But Jesus points us toward a better way of being human. The power of God appears not in domination but in humility, not in coercion but in love, not in crushing enemies but in carrying burdens. If we want to know whether our lives—or our nation—are becoming more aligned with God’s kingdom, then question we should ask is much simpler: Are we becoming more like the One who speaks to us this way? That may be one of the most challenging questions we can ask. Yet Jesus reveals that true freedom is not merely the ability to do whatever we want. True freedom is the ability to love, the ability to serve, the ability to become the people God created us to be. And that is where our other readings meet us this morning .The freedom to trust. The freedom to step into God’s future. And perhaps that is what Christian freedom ultimately means: not merely freedom from something, but freedom for something: freedom for love, freedom for compassion, freedom for justice, freedom for mercy, freedom for building communities where every person knows they belong, freedom for participating in God’s work of healing the world. So, perhaps the question before us is not simply whether we are free. Perhaps the deeper question is what we are doing with our freedom. Are we using it only for ourselves? Or are we using it to build a society where burdens are lighter, where the weary find rest, where the vulnerable are protected, where strangers are welcomed, where power is exercised with humility, where love of neighbour is more than a slogan? A yoke is a wooden beam used to connect two oxen who pull a heavy load, in which an older well-trained ox is yoked with a younger untrained ox. The older animal takes the greater load and effectively teaches the younger how to work. Jesus invites those who feel overburdened to come to him, and he tells them, “My yoke is easy and my burden light.” His promise to those who are weary and burdened is that he will share their burden, walk with them, and help them carry their load; like the older ox, helping the younger. We do not have to do all the heavy lifting, for Jesus promises that he will be our companion and we can rely on him. The yoke also serves to keep us on track, prevents from wandering off the path, and guides us in an enduring relationship with Jesus. The Gospel does ask us to measure every nation—including our own—against the character of Jesus Christ. And Jesus, remarkably, tells us that the deepest truth about power is not greatness but gentleness: “Learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart.” May God give us the wisdom to use our freedom well. And may God help us become the kind of people, and the kind of nations, that more closely reflect the gentle and humble heart of Christ.

Supreme Being

Done-hoping this is enough and I can afford the crown.

Fly me to the moon

All are welcome if they wish to follow, but I think some will not turn back. How will they be viewed compared to other apostolic groups?

Lord have mercy.

This is such a great story. I love how down to earth he seems.

Whheeennnnn the moon hits your eye like a big PIZZA PIE, that's amore!

Dear Lord!

I think the Church has done everything possible to avoid this, but the SSPX has been - in my inexpert opinion - willfully obstinate. And it's not un-do-able. If the SSPX repents, they will be welcomed back into the Church.

About time?

Please pray for a baby girl who survived an abortion and her mother. She's in the NICU fighting for her life. The 17 year old mother's own dad slipped her an abortion pill without her knowledge. A criminal investigation is happening. https://www.lifenews.com/2026/06/16/baby-born-alive-at-23-weeks-after-surviving-forced-abortion/

L2.7 Je vous salut Marie, pleine de grace, le Seigneur est avec vous, vous etes benie entres toutes les femmes et Jesus, le fruit de vos entrailles est beni. Sainte Marie, Mere de Dieu, priez pour nous pecheus, maintenant et a l'heure de notre mort. Amen

This is hilarious on sooo many levels... SNL should make a skit out of this one!

Banned for supporting the system!!!

Pizza Supreme

St. Optatus argued that Christ established a single, visible seat of authority to prevent division. He pointed directly to Rome as the physical manifestation of this unity: "You cannot deny that you know that in the city of Rome the episcopal chair was given first to Peter, the chair in which Peter sat, the head of all the apostles... in which one chair unity should be preserved by all, so that the other apostles might not each stand up for his own chair, but that he should be a schismatic and a sinner who should set up another chair against that unique chair."

That is all

Contact your elected representatives here. https://liveaction.quorum.us/campaign/152959/ Why Congress Must Act Now If Congress fails to act by July 4th, 2026, Planned Parenthood will once again receive taxpayer funds on the very day America celebrates its freedom and founding principles. That would be a moral and political failure. Congress must act to extend the full defund and end this cycle of taxpayer complicity once and for all. One year is not enough. It’s time to stop sending nearly $2.3 million every day to an organization that profits from the destruction of human life and deceives the American people.

Supreme court

high court

Pittsburg will ordain 5 men to the priesthood tomorrow, June 27, including 1 who is Deaf. That is soon-to-be-Father Erik Pintar. You can watch the ordination, live, at the link below.

During the season after Pentecost, we focus on what it means to be a Christian. At Christmas we heard the Good News of Christ’s incarnation. The Easter acclamation – Alleluia! Christ is Risen! – is still ringing in our ears. At Pentecost we heard that we have been empowered by the Holy Spirit to be Christ’s body in the world. Now what? Well, according to Jesus in today’s reading from St. Matthew, if we have truly heard the revelation of “these things” in today’s passage from the Gospel according to St. Matthew, then we are infants – babies. Today’s Gospel text takes up the words Jesus tells his disciples at the end of commissioning them. He sends them out into the world, telling them how to behave—what to do and not to do—and offering them reassurance. He explains that some people will recognize them as doing God’s work, will receive them as Christ himself, and that these people will receive their reward in the next life. Jesus says, “Whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple, truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.” So how do we practice it? We are trained from an early age to be kind to strangers, and we know the rough outline of how to be good hosts. But then we head home. Then we head off to the people who see us all the time—or we go to the family barbecue with the people that we grew up with. And then we let our guard down. We don’t need to impress them, and they don’t need to impress us, and we can easily forget that these are also the people who carry Christ. The spark of divinity is alive and well here, too. How do we see and receive it even in a grumpy spouse, or a critical parent, or an unruly child? How do you see Christ in the people closest to you, even when you are tired? That’s the hardest call. It’s so easy to look past someone who is there all the time. But Christ never invites us to a life of ease. Christ might well come to us the most in those who are the easiest to dismiss. Don’t forget how Christ shows up in the world… What if Christ comes to you through a person, you have already decided not to take seriously? In the person who tell the same story over and over? Those people who get under our skin offer us the chance to ask ourselves about our irritation—what is it blinding us to? What are we unable to see when we centre ourselves, instead of centering Christ? The good news—and there always is Good News in this great book of ours—is that you can start small. With “a cup of cold water,” Jesus says, or whatever a “cup of water” might mean in that relationship. Perhaps it means paying attention to what that critical person is saying, remembering that much of the time, people are negative because they are hurt, and recognizing how a kind word might bring healing. Or perhaps it means not joining into another political argument to be right, but listening to the fear behind someone’s position, in order to understand the way, they see the world better. You don’t have to fix all your relationships or suddenly like all people, but just ask yourself this: What if Christ comes to me in the small, ordinary, slightly annoying, very human ways that I almost ignore? Today’s deceptively small gospel teaching reveals that for followers of Christ, transformation is necessary. We don’t get to live our lives as we did before; we certainly don’t get a life of ease and comfort. We are called to live lives oriented towards God, which means we will not be the same as before. We simply cannot encounter Christ and remain the same. Christ is already showing up in the people around us. So how do we show up for Christ? Christ is showing up in our lives in the people closest to us, and we are asked to recognize that presence, to let it shape how we show up, to let ourselves be transformed—in real time—by the presence of Christ in the world. Even in those right beside us. Let us keep praying that we have eyes to see.