Prayer: One% Challenge

On By Fr. David NeuschwanderIn Lent, Ordinary Time

8th Sunday in Ordinary Time

This Lent I don’t want you to give up chocolate, I don’t want you to give up sweets (we’ll focus on the topic of fasting next year).  This Lent I want all of us, as the parish family of St. Joseph and St. Ann, to focus on prayer!  I’d like us all to focus on growing in our relationship with Jesus Christ through daily prayer.  One percent of our day is 14 minutes and 24 seconds – this Lent the challenge is to spend one more percent of your day, each day, in prayer.  If you aren’t praying every day yet, this is the time to start!  If you are praying regularly, then it’s time to add an extra 14 minutes and 24 seconds of intentional prayer with the Lord.  Try any and all prayer resources available and find the ones that help you to row the most in your relationship with the Lord!

Christians Pray Every Day

On By Fr. David NeuschwanderIn Ordinary Time

6th Sunday in Ordinary Time

As Christians we are proclaiming ourselves to be in a relationship with Jesus Christ, followers of Christ.  Our Christian life is built on this relationship with the Lord out of which everything else flows.  Daily talking with God is not an achievement in the Christian life, it’s the foundation and the minimum, the beginning of the Christian life!  Christians pray every day.

This Lent, our focus as parishioners of the cluster of St. Joseph and St. Ann parishes will be on prayer – on personally taking one step deeper in our relationship with Jesus Christ, no matter where we are currently at in our life and habits of prayer, taking one step deeper, together.

A New Old Way

On By Fr. David NeuschwanderIn Ordinary Time

3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

We will be starting a journey as the parishes of St. Joseph and St. Ann beginning this Lent, starting a journey in the direction God is truly calling us as His disciples!  Some things, like the Israelites in our first reading, we will discover to be different than we were originally told or taught, even by those in the Church.  We are going to be hitting the “reset” button on what Jesus truly calls us to as Christians in this beautiful Catholic faith, which will involve detoxing from misunderstanding and false notions.  Step One (and our focus during Lent this year) will be focusing on growing in prayer and our relationship with God.  Step Two, which grows out of our relationship with God in prayer, is uncovering and living out our specific roles in the Body of Christ, which Paul describes in our second reading this weekend.  I’m excited to lead us on down this path which may seem new to us, but is in fact old, very old – it’s the way Jesus Christ Himself called us to live!

Holy Family

On By Fr. David NeuschwanderIn Feasts

Feast of the Holy Family

Jesus not only came as a baby at Christmas, He also entered into a human family – with all the joys and frustrations that go with it.  We are challenged in all relationships, but especially in the family, to put the wants and needs of others before our own, to stretch our hearts, to learn how to love more, to sacrifice for each other.  Our readings today all challenge us to put others first, “Children, obey your parents in everything…Wives, be subordinate to your husbands…Husbands, love your wives.”  Jesus loved us, and so He subordinated Himself to our needs, even to the point of death.  We can practice this kind of love every day, especially in the family!

Awake and Conscious

On By Fr. David NeuschwanderIn Advent

3rd Sunday of Advent

The story of Advent is that the Eternal Son of the Father, God Himself, became human to save us from our sin and show that He IS with us.  God is always with me – every moment of the day.  I’ll be honest, though: that’s really hard to see sometimes.  But it’s the reality!  When I go through my day not consciously experiencing the presence of God with me, that’s living in a fantasy, it’s living in a lie, it’s living with my eyes closed to reality.  God is with me!  The challenge this week: I dare you to try to live one hour of your normal, daily life conscious that Jesus IS with you!

Real Holiness

On By Fr. David NeuschwanderIn Advent

1st Sunday of Advent

As we begin this new Church year we are reminded by Paul “to be blameless in holiness”.  What does holiness really mean?  What does holiness really look like?  Holiness is not something far out there or high up beyond our reach; I would argue that holiness is something close to us…too close…uncomfortably close.  Holiness is doing all of the normal things we do with and for the Lord, living in God’s kingdom and spreading God’s kingdom in and through the daily situations and interactions of our lives.  That’s our mission, that’s real holiness, and that can be attained by anyone — which is why it’s scary: because it means I no longer have an excuse!  

“God has created me to do him some definite service; he has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another. I have my mission.” ~ St. John Henry Newman

What Has Jesus Done For You?

On By Fr. David NeuschwanderIn Ordinary Time

30th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Rules are for children who don’t yet fully understand; as we mature we begin to grasp the deeper reasons behind the rules, along with their nuances and qualifications.  In the Gospel today Jesus heals Bartimaeus the blind man, who then follows Jesus on ‘the way’; Bartimaeus isn’t leaving to follow a set of rules and regulations, He’s leaving to follow a person – Jesus Christ.  An immature understanding of our faith sees Catholicism as a bunch of rules, while an adult understanding acknowledges that all of these rules are for the sake of living out a healthy, strong, mature relationship with a person – Jesus Christ!

Like Bartimaeus, God has done great things for each of us as well!  Can we respond maturely and set out on ‘the way’ with Jesus, next to Bartimaeus, not simply following rules but actually growing in a relationship with a person – Jesus Christ?

An Inheritance

On By Fr. David NeuschwanderIn Ordinary Time

26th Sunday in Ordinary Time

First, I will share a story with you of an inheritance.  Then, moving to our Gospel, Jesus speaks very forthrightly about a place of unquenchable fire called Gehenna and that sin is what leads us there.  Do we believe Jesus’ words?  Do we believe in hell and that sin leads people to it?  Or have we learned now, having outgrown the narrow mindset of that antiquated time that the Son of God walked this earth, that God loves everyone so much that nobody would ever go to hell?  Have we learned that Jesus was wrong?  And what does that have to do with an inheritance?