Holy Nativity Catholic Church

08/29/2026

“If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me.” Matthew 16:24b

Peter was flush with the excitement of being told that he was to be the holder of the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. He had declared Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and been declared the rock upon which the Lord would build His church. Yet, shortly after, Jesus began to tell of His impending death on the cross. It would only have been natural for Peter to assume that our Lord must surely have been in the sun too long, or perhaps He had bumped His head on something and was not thinking straight. Peter’s first reaction is to pull the Lord aside and try to straighten Him out. Jesus’ reaction was swift and sure. He informed Peter that he was a hinderance and not on the side of God…” Peter’s head must have been swimming! Yet another blow was coming, “If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me.” Hearing this admonition the silence must have been deafening. I need to take up the most cruel form of torture and death while denying my own dreams, desires, needs, even life itself?

Peter eventually lived up to this challenge, and we are called to do the same. We may not physically take up a cross of wood, but we all must take up a cross. The Christian life is one of sacrifice. We are called to sacrifice our desires for those of our spouse, children, and larger families. We are called to take up the cross of a more simple life, free of the encumbrances of large numbers of possessions. Routinely people in the United States and around the world have to evacuate their homes in the face of advancing forest fires, floods, and storms. There is no way they can take everything, some things must stay behind. It is a matter of what is truly important. I would challenge you this week to go through your home, mentally if not physically, and ask, yourself. “If I had four hours to evacuate, what comes with me, and what stays behind?” The answer could be very revealing.

08/15/2026

The Power of Persistent Prayer
Have you ever prayed desperately for an answer, and felt as though God was not listening? It is easy to become discouraged. The Canaanite woman was desperate, her daughter was “severely possessed by a demon.” She came pleading for the Lord’s help. Yet we are told “He did not answer her a word.” The disciples came to Him and asked Him to send her away. This is not as heartless as it may seem. They were most likely asking our Lord to grant her request quickly and so allow them to get back to their time together in learning from the Lord. What they didn’t realize was that in our Lord’s conversation with the woman we and they are given a tremendous lesson in persistent prayer and abandonment to divine providence.

Her prayer was persistent even though at first she was seemingly ignored. She cried out all the more persistently. The disciples reacted as many of us would. Please Lord, answer quickly so she will go away. When the Lord told her that He came only to the lost sheep of Israel her answer was only “Lord, help me.” When our Lord obliquely called her a dog, seemingly rejecting her request, she humbly answered that even the dogs get the scraps from the master’s table. Her answer was not the key to unlock our Lord’s heart, to change His mind, rather it was the lesson our Lord wants us to learn. Never stop asking, never stop praying, humbly asking God for His will to be done. Our Lord knew exactly what he would do from the start of this encounter. His seeming hesitation was for the development of the faith of the woman. Even when God says “no” it is for our good, as we can trust that He knows what is best for us more than we ever will.

Notice the woman did not tell Jesus how she wanted her prayer answered. She simply asked Jesus to have mercy on her. She left the rest to Jesus; thus demonstrating trust in God’s providence. (Matthew 15:22) Sometimes we want to tell God how He should “do His job”, instead here we are instructed to leave the answer to Him. If we come to God seeking to unite ourselves to His will, we become instruments of His grace to the world. The answer that comes will be greater than anything we could suggest on our own.

06/13/2026

He had compassion on them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd…

The people of God need to be cared for, the people in today’s Gospel were described as sheep without a shepherd. Why were they harassed and helpless? Because the religious leadership of the day were not collectively interested in the well-being of the people, only in the assurance that everyone was following the rules. Now the rules are important, our Lord Himself taught that if anyone breaks the rules and teaches other to do the same, they will be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven. However, we need to include compassion, as our Lord did here, when dealing with the people of God. What did our Lord instruct us? We are to first, pray to the Lord of the harvest asking for more laborers, for indeed, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Prayer is the specific task of all believers, although it is exemplified in the lives of the cloistered religious. It is noteworthy that the rise or decline of the church begins with prayer. When the apostles sought out deacons it was so they could devote themselves to “…prayer and to the ministry of the word.” That prayer was modeled by them, but was, and is, the collective responsibility of all believers.

As we pray for the spread of the Gospel we also pray for an active response to the call for vocations. The Church consistently needs the faithful to encourage vocations to the priesthood and professed religious life. This begins with the abovementioned prayer. Now our Lord equipped the Disciples with the ability to go, preach, heal, and to cast out demons and sent them out into the surrounding villages to meet the needs of the people both physical and spiritual. One error made today is an overemphasis on the physical needs of people, while not considering that every human soul we encounter is both body and soul. The eternal soul is the most crucial element as it is eternity in the Kingdom of Heaven we are to look toward. Lest we see an erroneous duality where the body is less important than the soul, we see that our Lord sent them to heal as well as to preach. However, this mortal coil is to be renewed after the resurrection. Our immortal soul is what provides the continuity between the now, and the then.

So therefore, let us pray for the workers who are to be the ones bringing the harvest into the barns, let us pray for souls who will respond to the Gospel, and let us be willing workers who stand at the ready to do our Lord’s bidding.

05/23/2026

He breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit.” – John 20:22 We know that our Lord did nothing without purpose, and this moment was no different.

In the book of Genesis chapter 2, verse 7, it is written that, “the LORD God formed the man out of the dust of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” After the fall in the Garden of Eden, Original Sin entered the world bringing with it spiritual and physical death. When our Lord was raised from the dead, death itself was swallowed up in the victory of the Cross and Resurrection. Thus, Creation was given the chance to be recreated. Christ imparted to the Apostles the breath of life that they too could become a new creation.

In the old-form baptismal rite, the priest would breathe into the nostrils of the infant to symbolize the imparting of the life of the Holy Spirit. We are reminded here that the descent of the Holy Spirit we celebrate on Pentecost Sunday is the quickening gift of the life of Christ through His indwelling Spirit. We are not called to face life alone, but in the strength of the Holy Spirit. We have been created anew. St Paul assures us in II Corinthians 5:17, “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (NRSVCE) Our old lives are counted as lost in the new life of the risen Lord. The challenge to us is to remember, we cannot contain or bottle up the Holy Spirit within ourselves, we must let the Spirit flow through us to enliven and recreate the world around us. This is not some magical ability given to us, rather it comes by our willing submission and participation in the Divine life given to us by the presence of the Holy Spirit. Let us go forth and tell the good news in the power of the Spirit.

05/16/2026

"Prayer is the best preparation for Holy Communion. Prayer is the raising of the mind to God. When we pray we go to meet Christ Who is coming to us. If our Creator and Savior comes from heaven with such great love, it is only fitting that we should go to meet Him. And this is what we do when we spend some time in prayer."- St. Bernadine of Siena (1380-1444) source: http://www.therealpresence.org/eucharst/tes/quotes8.html

Sometimes there is a question as to how to pray. Prayer is the raising of our hearts and minds to God. When we first start this feels awkward. We start to pray and then sputter out because we feel as though all we can do is recite some of the prayers we knew as children. There is a story of a pastor who asked a man in the church to pray at the start of a meeting. An awkward silence ensues, then they heard a childhood prayer rising from the lips of the man. It was all he could think of to say. With persistence the prayers become more personal, more filled with hopes, fears, and petitions. It is said that St. John Vianney once asked an old farmer what he prayed as he sat before the Blessed Sacrament. “Nothing, I look at Him, and He looks at me.” He was spending wordless time in the presence of a dear friend.

In the 17th Chapter of John we read the priestly prayer of our Lord as he prepared for His Passion, Death, and Resurrection. He slipped into prayer with that familiarity that a Son has with His Father. It is no accident that this prayer was recorded for us as it gives His vision for the life of the Church that was to come. His prayer was that we would be unified. He also prayed that we would be true to His Name. May the Lord grant us the grace to be one with Him in prayer that we might also be one with Him as we receive Him in Holy Communion.

What famous Saints and other holy people have said about the Eucharist.

05/09/2026

A pastor I knew when I was young told the story once of a classmate who worked his way through seminary selling vacuum cleaners shortly after World War II. He walked into a house and quickly dumped a load of dirt on the floor over the objections of the lady of the house. When he looked around for an electric outlet to plug in the vacuum, he discovered there were none. She informed him that she had been trying to tell him there was no electricity in her home. There was no power.

Sadly, many times we, like the vacuum cleaner salesman, go looking for power in places where there is none. We seek answers in modern culture when what we most desperately need is time spent in prayer and meditation on Sacred Scripture and by receiving Him in the Sacrament of the Eucharist. When we cut ourselves off from the Eucharist we unplug ourselves from the power of God. Here our Lord waits for us to seek Him, and He is always present with us if we only turn to Him.

The disciples were afraid. They were suddenly faced with the very frightening prospect of being “alone”. Our Lord told them that while He was “going away” He would not leave them orphans. He promised that He would send them the Holy Spirit Who would bring all things to remembrance that He had taught them. We receive the Holy Spirit at our baptism making us the children of God and in fullness we receive the Holy Spirit in our Confirmation. Let us not waste the immense gift God has given us but rather may we turn always to the Holy Spirit our teacher and advocate.

When life seems hard to understand and the way ahead seems dark may our Lord grant us the grace to trust in Him and to seek His guidance. He will keep His promise, you will not be alone, you will not be powerless. Our Church strongly encourages us to spend at least fifteen minutes per day in prayer, nothing could be more important to our spiritual welfare. As we draw near to the celebration of Pentecost let us pray with the Apostles, “Come Holy Spirit!”

04/26/2026

Hear the voice of the Good Shepherd

Our Lord is calling us. The sheep know the voice of their shepherd. Sheep of our Lord’s time would respond to the voice of their shepherd because they heard it every day. We learn to know the voice of our Lord through time spent in prayer, and in meditation on Sacred Scripture.

Respond to the call

Have you ever noticed that at times you can hear what someone is saying without actually listening? The eyes of the listener begin to glaze over and you know you have lost them. Imagine what messages our Lord has for us that sometimes we don’t comprehend. The lights are sometimes on, but no one is home. When He calls us we truly need to focus and pay attention.

Follow where He leads

God calls us to claim our citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven. This does not mean we leave this world physically until we are called home at the end of our lives. In the Gospel of John our Lord did not pray that we would be taken out of the world but that we be saved from the evil one. In our reading today the Apostle Peter instructed the people to “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” So, we are called to be citizens of Heaven who are living and working in this world. This means that there are times that when like Lot and his family, we are called to leave what is comfortable behind us and move into the unknown. We have two choices, obey the command of God and continue the journey toward Heaven, or we, like Lot’s wife, find ourselves looking back at the world, and like her becoming rooted forever in the world, not attaining the joys of Heaven.