#resurrection #catholic

• At the beginning of the second century, around the year 100, a man named Justin was born in the city of Flavia Neapolis. That is a town in modern day Palestine.
• Growing up, Justin was educated as a philosopher in the school of Platonic philosophy. He was a pagan and he heard talk about a group of people called Christians. He was told that they were terribly immoral people.
• But this did not make sense to Justin. He saw the Christians appearing before Roman judges and willingly being martyred for Christ. He said to himself that it was impossible that they would be doing this while living an evil life or a life of pleasure.
• St. Justin went on to investigate Christianity and become a convert. Since he came from the pagan world and understood it well, he was in a good position to make the right arguments with the pagans to convert them to Catholicism.
• St. Justin was eventually martyred when he was about 65 years old and we celebrate his feast day on April 14.
• One of the things that St. Justin tried to do was to convince the Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius, to stop putting Christians to death. For this end, he wrote two works of explanation and defense of the Catholic faith that were called “Apologies”. This does not mean that he was saying sorry in these works; rather, Apology was a Greek word meaning “a formal defense of one’s opinions and conduct”.
• There is one part of St. Justin’s first Apology that I would like to focus upon today. It is the part where he defends the resurrection of bodies and his defense relates to today’s Gospel.

#Catholic #SSPX

• Whether you drive to St. Isidore’s from Byers or Bennett, Aurora or Denver, or elsewhere, you come to a church in a rural setting, surrounded by farmland.
• You come to a church that was built by farmers and which is dedicated to a saint who was a farmer, St. Isidore.
• You come to the traditional Latin Mass, which often presents Gospels for your reflection that have some relation to farming. There are at least eight Sundays of the year when this happens. This Sunday and next Sunday are two examples.
• The reason for this is that Our Lord often drew from farming in His teaching. He compared Himself to a shepherd and us to sheep.
• He compared the Church to a field and us to plants. He talked about seeds being planted and bearing fruit, or landing on the wrong ground and not bearing fruit, about seeds growing up with weeds. He talked about mustard seeds, about vines and vineyards. He compared people to trees and said that we should judge them according to their fruits: how they act and what effect they have on others.
• Our Lord once came upon a fig tree and cursed it for being barren as a symbol of a soul not making progress; He told us that we should look at fig trees to know what season we are in.
• Our Lord is the Creator of Heaven and Earth. So, we should not be surprised that, when He comes from Heaven down onto this Earth, He teaches us about Heaven using the things of Earth. He teaches us about His design of Heaven using analogies with His design of Earth.
• One of the main things that Our Lord is teaching us when He compares us to plants is the duty we have to grow in holiness over the course of our life. It is not acceptable to Our Lord that He would give us this life as a time to make our way to Heaven and then we end up using it for other things.

• As we come to the feast of Christ the King this year, everyone has politics on their mind. There are important elections coming up in less than two weeks that will decide the course of our country for the next four years.
• The coincidence of this feast and the elections provides for us an opportune moment for us, as Catholics, to remind ourselves of our politics.
• Our political stance is very simple: we have a king to whom we pledge our wholehearted allegiance, Our Lord Jesus Christ. We recognize Him as our God, our Redeemer and as the head of the race to which we belong, the human race.
• We strive with all of our might to submit our entire lives to Him, to follow His will in everything that we do. It is an honor for us to be able to serve Him.
• We believe that He established a Church that is a divine institution, the Catholic Church, and that this Church communicates to us the truths that our King came to teach us and the way of life that our King wants us to follow.
• We know that when we serve this King by living a devout Catholic life and especially by following Him on the royal way of the cross, He gives us a share in His royal power. He gives us the power to rule over the world, the flesh and the devil.
• Through our service of Christ our King, we become truly free. We have the ability to refuse all that works to destroy us; we have the ability to direct ourselves towards our true good.
• We know that, if we are faithful to our King during this life, we will be given a kingdom in the life to come. We will be given a share in the eternal reign of Christ the King for all eternity in Heaven. We will join in the triumph of Our Lord, Our Lady and the saints forever.
• This is our politics; this is our plan for our life. For us, Our Lord Jesus Christ is everything.