Category: Uncategorized
Caterpillars Don’t Become Butterflies! a repost
Thought for the Week Did you know that caterpillars are not “transformed” into butterflies? In metamorphosis (the name of the process), a caterpillar is liquefied. Only after its actual death can an entirely new creature, a butterfly, emerge! Most people’s image of the process is more like Eric Carle’s classic children’s book The Very Hungry Caterpillar. […]
Caterpillars Don’t Become Butterflies!
Wedding Day
Today’s readings hit 🎯
Choose wisely.
Don’t give up easily.
Not this Catholic
It is an old story, the Church leadership enamored with a strongman. False piety, imaginary enemies, disregard for friendship only alliance, advantage and acquisition.
We are past the inflection point. There are no shared values only a veneer of values.
I can’t predict the future. It is like a barrel going through an explosive decompression. Damage in every direction and indiscriminately harming the innocent.
I can predict a profound grief the likes of which predate me. I’ll be here. Comfort, comfort my people, says your God” (Isaiah 40:1)
This instruction is in the midst of a great calamity.
https://www.abc.net.au/religion/massimo-faggioli-trump-captured-american-catholicism/104955542
We are in the calamity.
It is the Year of Hope. And it is. Or did you think hope is the presage for easy?
Peace,
Deacon Gerry
With Charity and Clarity
https://deacongerrypalermo.blog/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/wp-1739302012831.pdf
Pope Francis On Immigration above, a meditation below.
Jesus is visiting
Looks v Doing
Greetings on this the Memorial of Saint Scholastica, Virgin
Readings: Genesis 1:1-19; Psalm 104:1-2a, 5-6, 10, 12, 24, 35c; Mark 6:53-56
They scurried about
As they were leaving the boat, people immediately recognized him.
They scurried about the surrounding country
and began to bring in the sick on mats
to wherever they heard he was.
Whatever villages or towns or countryside he entered,
they laid the sick in the marketplaces
and begged him that they might touch only the tassel on his cloak;
and as many as touched it were healed.
A Modern Saying
These days the joke being said is… Jesus is coming… look busy!
Looks v Doing – Who are are we kidding?
Well, Jesus IS visiting, all the time. The sarcastic modern saying “Look Busy” is a sad commentary on the lack of awe at the presence of the Lord and the trivialization of our role in the salvation story.
Maybe we can take our cue from the gentiles of the land at Gennesaret.
- They scurried about the surrounding country.
- Brought in the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was.
- Whatever villages or towns or countryside he entered, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and begged him that they might touch only the tassel on his cloak; and as many as touched it were healed.
Looks don’t mean anything.
Sacred Readings full text: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/021025.cfm
Peace be with you,
Deacon Gerry
Pope Francis speaks out for Children
Joke told at the funeral today
So here is a joke for you to use….
One late night a man heard a knock at the door and answered it only to see a snail standing there. He was so upset he threw the snail as far as he could. About a year later, another late night knock at the door. When he opened the door the very same snail was there looking at him. Before he had a chance to react, the snail said,
“What was that all about?”
The son turns to me and says, “I cleaned it up for you Deacon.”
The Age of Knowledge: Trusting God’s Design
We sow what we do not know how
Greetings on this the Memorial of Saint John Bosco, Priest
Readings: Hebrews 10:32-39; Psalm 37:3-4, 5-6, 23-24, 39-40; Mark 4:26-34
Summary
Jesus said to the crowds: “This is how it is with the Kingdom of God; it is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land and would sleep and rise night and day and the seed would sprout and grow, he knows not how. Of its own accord the land yields fruit, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. And when the grain is ripe, he wields the sickle at once, for the harvest has come.”
Information Age
We live in the Information Age. Maybe that title is outdated now. The Internet Age? Even that title is too tame. Age of Discovery? Nah, already used previously. Maybe let us call these current times: the Age of Knowledge.
Of all the things that can be known, we know. A click and a search. Even more, with AI assisting, discover vectors, correlations and causation not previously known. Scientifically it is known as the Anthropocene Age (human domination), alternatively geologically called, Cenozoic (“new life”) era. But wanting to know and knowing are not the same. Sometimes we jut have to accept: he knows not how.
We want to know – Now!
This knowledge appetite is insatiable. We pour billions into the sciences and arts to discover the next thing and the next. Of itself it is fine and good. Of only itself it is a disaster. Lost in all this impulse and discovery is the person and person-hood.
For Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. (1 COR 1:22-25).
Trusting by design
Commit to the LORD your way;
trust in him, and he will act.
He will make justice dawn for you like the light;
bright as the noonday shall be your vindication.
We trust the seed will grow. We know, without knowing how, that things will order themselves aright. We have faith in the natural environment we are born into and a we are a part of naturally.
Faith in the person of God
By the LORD are the steps of a man made firm,
and he approves his way.
Though he fall, he does not lie prostrate,
for the hand of the LORD sustains him.
We are not among those who draw back and perish, but among those who have faith and will possess life.
The salvation of the just is from the LORD;
he is their refuge in time of distress.
And the LORD helps them and delivers them;
he delivers them from the wicked and saves them,
because they take refuge in him.
Sacred Readings full text: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/013125.cfm
Peace be with you,
Deacon Gerry
A Deep Sense of Blind Faith and Books
The internet was supposed to liberate knowledge, but in fact it buried it, first under a vast sewer of ignorance, laziness, bigotry, superstition and filth and then beneath the cloak of political surveillance. Now cyberspace exists exclusively to promote commerce, gossip and pornography. And of course to hunt down sedition. Only paper is safe. Books […]
A Deep Sense of Blind Faith and Books