A Note to Good Fighters

Dear Good Fighters,

Between the long Christmas break and the snow causing us to cancel Family Ministry, I miss you. Like most of you, I've been stuck at home the last couple weeks. I've been trying to get everything ready for our upcoming meetings and ministry, but there's only so much I can do at home. At Mass today, Fr. Radmar preached at St. Paul's BSU about ENCOUNTER. He even had us turn to someone we didn't know, learn the person's name, and encounter the person for one minute. Our faith, our Church, and our God are all about the ENCOUNTER.

Even though you may be stuck at home, God wants to ENCOUNTER you today.

God wants a relationship with you. God wants to love you. God wants you to let him love you. We have so many broken relationships around us (including our relationship with ourselves), but our relationship with God is the one relationship that will never be broken. You are loved as you are, loved where you are going, and loved without condition.

This Sunday at Good Fighters our topic was going to be FOLLOW: How does God guide us into the full life? Even though we can't meet, I invite you to watch the Alpha video below. Think about it. Pray about it. Talk about it. Then, if you're serious about encountering God, journal about this question:

Let’s say God has a plan for your life. Imagine God is giving you a guidebook to SEEK, FIND, and FULFILL that plan. Based on what you know about God, your life experience, what we’ve covered at Good Fighters, your gifts and desires, and your purpose in life, write what you imagine God telling you in your personalized guidebook.

We will add to the Guidebooks in the coming weeks. God is speaking to us. God wants to encounter us. Are we listening? I hope so.

Trying to FOLLOW and ENCOUNTER God alongside you,

Daniel

Need a Confirmation Saint?

If you are an Igniter looking for a Confirmation saint, there's a two-minute quiz that matches you with a saint who shares your interests. It might not be a perfect patron, but it's a fun way to start your saint search. Thanks is due to ChurchPop.com for the Obscure Saint Quiz. Take it here.

Christmas Reflection: Jesus is Listening

Part XI:
Jesus is Listening

In this Christmas season of the Church, we ought to spend time rediscovering Jesus. Who is this God-man? What did he do? Why should we love him? Why is our Church founded and grounded in him? Look for a series of posts leading up to the Epiphany on January 6 that reawaken our love for Christ and the Church.

Jesus listens to what we say, but he also listens to what we don't say.

Christmas Reflection: This Changes Everything

Part X:
This Changes Everything

In this Christmas season of the Church, we ought to spend time rediscovering Jesus. Who is this God-man? What did he do? Why should we love him? Why is our Church founded and grounded in him? Look for a series of posts leading up to the Epiphany on January 6 that reawaken our love for Christ and the Church.

The covering of snow melts, seeps into the earth to water it, and gives life as it leads to spring and summer.

Christmas Reflection: Jesus is Alive

Part IX:
Jesus is Alive

In this Christmas season of the Church, we ought to spend time rediscovering Jesus. Who is this God-man? What did he do? Why should we love him? Why is our Church founded and grounded in him? Look for a series of posts leading up to the Epiphany on January 6 that reawaken our love for Christ and the Church.

Where do you need Jesus in your darkness?

Christmas Reflection: Here's What You've Been Waiting For

Part VII:
Here's What You've Been Waiting For

In this Christmas season of the Church, we ought to spend time rediscovering Jesus. Who is this God-man? What did he do? Why should we love him? Why is our Church founded and grounded in him? Look for a series of posts leading up to the Epiphany on January 6 that reawaken our love for Christ and the Church.

What is it in your heart that you're really longing for?

Christmas Reflection: What's Your Why?

Part VII:
What's Your Why?

In this Christmas season of the Church, we ought to spend time rediscovering Jesus. Who is this God-man? What did he do? Why should we love him? Why is our Church founded and grounded in him? Look for a series of posts leading up to the Epiphany on January 6 that reawaken our love for Christ and the Church.

When a person has a WHY, a person can do almost anything. What is Jesus' WHY? And what is his WHO?

Christmas Reflection: Jesus is Not Safe

Part VI:
Jesus is not safe.

In this Christmas season of the Church, we ought to spend time rediscovering Jesus. Who is this God-man? What did he do? Why should we love him? Why is our Church founded and grounded in him? Look for a series of posts leading up to the Epiphany on January 6 that reawaken our love for Christ and the Church.

Jesus doesn't allow us to stay in the same place, but constantly invites us to grow. How will you grow this new year?

Christmas Reflection: The Six Most "Un-Christlike" Things Christ Did

Part V
The Six Most "Un-Christlike" Things Christ Did

In this Christmas season of the Church, we ought to spend time rediscovering Jesus. Who is this God-man? What did he do? Why should we love him? Why is our Church founded and grounded in him? Look for a series of posts leading up to the Epiphany on January 6 that reawaken our love for Christ and the Church.

WWJD: What would Jesus do?

It’s a great question. Christians are of course supposed to follow the example of Christ.

There can be a problem, though, when the answers people give to the question are disconnected from Scripture. People can end up just taking whatever they would do and then claim Jesus probably would have done it, too. But the Jesus described in the New Testament does not fit well with many of our modern sensibilities.

Yes, Jesus taught love, mercy, and sacrifice. But these things, if viewed from a contemporary lens, can easily be reduced to a kind of hollow sentimentalism. The Jesus of the Gospels, on the other hand, was deeply serious – both about loving others, and about sin.

So here are 6 things Jesus did that many people today would probably brand as “unChrist-like.”

1) Called people names

You might just want to read all of chapter 23 in Matthew’s Gospel.

Jesus gives a long and detailed attack on the moral character of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, and he pulls no punches. Among the names he calls them are “snakes,” “brood of vipers,” “hypocrites,” and “blind guides.” Ouch.

2) Offended people without apology

In Matthew chapter 15, some Pharisees and teachers of the law challenge Jesus about why he and his disciples don’t keep a certain tradition of the elders. In response, Jesus ignores their question, calls them hypocrites, and points out how they contradict the law of God with some of their traditions.

Then Jesus’ disciples come to him and say, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?”

Jesus’ response? He offers no apology, no attempt at clarification, but continues his critique: “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. Leave them; they are blind guides. If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.”

3) Warned against laughter

A lot of people have heard of the Beatitudes as they appear in Matthew chapter 5: “Blessed are the poor in spirit… blessed are those who mourn… blessed are the meek,” etc.

A similar set of blessings also appear in Luke chapter 6, except that they are also paired with corresponding warnings:

But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort.
Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep.
Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.

All four of these are challenging. But notice that the 3rd one is a warning against laughing. Imagine the headlines if Jesus had preached this today. He’s probably be branded as some sort of rigid, humorless archconservative.

4) Cleared the Temple with a whip

One of the times Jesus’ visited the Temple in Jerusalem, the Gospel of John says “he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money.” His response?

So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!”

It’s easy to read over these words quickly without grasping their full import. He made a whip, and used it to at least drive the animals out of the Temple, and possibly the people as well (there’s ambiguity with the word “all”). He flipped tables and scattered people’s money around, while he was also driving them out.

This was not just some nice request.

5) Was intentionally opaque in his teaching

Jesus had so many memorable parables. He told them because stories are easier for common people to understand and remember, right?

Actually, it’s the opposite.

In Matthew chapter 13, Jesus is asked point-blank: “Why do you speak to the people in parables?” And here’s his answer: Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. This is why I speak to them in parables: “Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.”
In other words, it appears that Jesus taught in parables to make it hard for the average person to understand. He then revealed the meaning of his parables secretly to his close disciples.

6) Preached graphic depictions of hell

Everyone knows that “fire and brimstone” preaching is ineffective and, in any case, antithetical to the spirit of the Gospel of love, right?

Then why did Jesus preach about hell so much?

Jesus gave horrifying descriptions of the place. Throughout the Gospels we find that Jesus describes hell as a place of “weeping and gnashing of teeth,” a place where “the worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not quenched,” a “blazing furnace,” “darkness,” “unquenchable fire,” and “the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” (Several of these descriptions he repeats several times.)

And he constantly warns people from doing things that would get them sent there. So maybe preaching about hell isn’t so bad?

Christmas Reflection: And They Crucified Him

Part IV:

And They Crucified Him

In this Christmas season of the Church, we ought to spend time rediscovering Jesus. Who is this God-man? What did he do? Why should we love him? Why is our Church founded and grounded in him? Look for a series of posts leading up to the Epiphany on January 6 that reawaken our love for Christ and the Church.

A medical doctor provides a physical description: The cross is placed on the ground and the exhausted man is quickly thrown backwards with his shoulders against the wood. The legionnaire feels for the depression at the front of the wrist. He drives a heavy, square wrought-iron nail through the wrist deep into the wood. Quickly he moves to the other side and repeats the action, being careful not to pull the arms too tightly, but to allow some flex and movement. The cross is then lifted into place. The left foot is pressed backward against the right foot, and with both feet extended, toes down, a nail is driven through the arch of each, leaving the knees flexed. The victim is now crucified.

As he slowly sags down with more weight on the nails in the wrists, excruciating fiery pain shoots along the fingers and up the arms to explode in the brain -- the nails in the wrists are putting pressure on the median nerves. As he pushes himself upward to avoid this stretching torment, he places the full weight on the nail through his feet. Again he feels the searing agony of the nail tearing through the nerves between the bones of his feet.

As the arms fatigue, cramps sweep through his muscles, knotting them deep relentless, and throbbing pain. With these cramps comes the inability to push himself upward to breathe. Air can be drawn into the lungs but not exhaled. He fights to raise himself in order to get even one small breath.

Finally, carbon dioxide builds up in the lungs and in the blood stream, and the cramps partially subsided. Spasmodically, he is able to push himself upward to exhale and bring in life-giving oxygen.

Hours of limitless pain, cycles of twisting, joint-renting cramps, intermittent partial asphyxiation, searing pain as tissue is torn from his lacerated back as he moves up and down against rough timber. Then another agony begins: a deep, crushing pain deep in the chest as the pericardium slowly fills with serum and begins to compress the heart.

It is now almost over. The loss of tissue fluids has reached a critical level. The compressed heart is struggling to pump heavy, thick, sluggish blood into the tissues. The tortured lungs are making frantic effort to gasp in small gulps of air. He can feel the chill of death creeping through his tissues.

Finally, he allows his body to die.

All this the Bible records with the simple words, "and they crucified Him" (Mark 15:24).

-- C. Truman Davis, M.D., M.S., Arizona Medicine, Vol. 22 No. 3 March 1965